In beaver world

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ENO

(Knos a.

THE GRIZZLY, OUR GREATEST WILD

ANIMAL. Illustrated.
YOUR NATIONAL PARKS. Illustrated.

THE STORY OF SCOTCH. Illustrated.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WONDERLAND.

Illustrated.
THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE.

Illustrated.

IN BEAVER WORLD. Illustrated.
THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.
WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTOH AND NEW YORK .

3ffustrattonfl from
6?

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ENOS A. MILLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published March

f)om# QflUf ttfatb

(preface

book is the result of beaver studies which
cover a period of twenty-seven years. During
these years I have rambled through every State
in the Union and visited Mexico, Canada, and
Alaska. In the course of these rambles notice
was taken of trees, birds, flowers, glaciers, and
bears, and studious attention devoted to the
beaver. No opportunity for beaver study was
missed, and many a long journey was made for
the purpose of investigating the conditions in live
colonies or in making measurements in the ruins
of old ones. These investigations were made dur-
ing every season of the year, and often a week
was spent in one colony. I have seen beaver at
work scores of times, and on a few occasions
dozens at one time.

Beaver have been my neighbors since I was a
boy. At any time during the past twenty-five
years I could go from my cabin on the slope of
Long's Peak, Colorado, to a number of colonies

vii

(preface

within fifteen minutes. Studies were carried on in
these near-by colonies in spring, summer, autumn,
and winter.

One autumn my entire time was spent in mak-
ing observations and watching the activities of
beaver in fourteen colonies. Sixty-four days in
succession I visited these colonies, three of them
twice daily. These daily investigations enabled
me to see the preparations for winter from begin-
ning to end. They also enabled me to understand
details which with infrequent visits I could not
have even discovered. During this autumn I saw
two houses built and a number of old ones repaired
and plastered. I also saw the digging of one
canal, the repairing of a number of old dams, and
the building of two new ones. In three of these
colonies I tallied each day the additional number
of trees cut for harvest. I saw many trees felled,
and noted the manner in which they were moved
by land and floated by water.

The greater number of the papers in this book
were written especially for it. Parts of the others
have been used in my books Wild Life on the
Rockies and The Spell of the Rockies. " The Bea-

viii

(preface

ver's Engineering" appeared in the Saturday
Evening Post, and I am indebted to McClures
for permission to use " Beaver Pioneers."

Beaver works are of economical and educa-
tional value besides adding a charm to the wilds.
The beaver is a persistent practicer of conserva-
tion and should not perish from the hills and
mountains of our land. Altogether the beaver has
so many interesting ways, is so useful, skillful,
practical, and picturesque that his life and his
deeds deserve a larger place in literature and in
our hearts.

E. A. M.

Con&nte

Working like a Beaver .
Our Friend the Beaver .
The Beaver Past and Present
As Others See Him
The Beaver Dam .
Harvest Time with Beavers
Transportation Facilities .
The Primitive House
The Beaver's Engineering .
The Ruined Colony .
Beaver Pioneers .
The Colony in Winter
The Original Conservationist
Bibliographical Note .
Index . . • • •

Beaver World Frontispiece

A Young Beaver on the side of a Beaver House 6

A Young Beaver Sunning Himself . . .22
In the Harvest-Field 32

Aspens cut by Beaver.

Beaver Ponds .42

A New Dam 66

Part of an Old Dam 1040 Feet Long . . .78
The Spruce Tree House and Food-Pile, October 12 92
Lake-Bed Canals at Lily Lake, October, igil . 102
Section of a T^O-foot Canal at Lily Lake . . 102
Plan of Beaver Colony on Jefferson River, near
Three Forks, Montana . . . . .108

An Unplastered and a Plastered House . .124
The 334-foot Canal . . . . . .140

Plan of Moraine Colony, with Dead-Wood Dam 144

The Dead-Wood Dam 148

xiii

The Moraine House before and after Enlargement 168

House in Lily Lake 180

House, Food-Pile, Pond, and Dam in Winter . 198

Where Beaver formerly lived and spread Soil . 218

T3?or6in<$ ftfo a

Me a

ONE September day I saw a number of beaver
at work upon a half - finished house. One
part of the house had been carried up about two
feet above the water, and against this were leaned
numerous sticks, which stood upon the top of the
foundation just above water-level. After these
sticks were arranged, they were covered with turf
and mud which the beaver scooped from the bot-
tom of the pond. In bringing this earth covering
up, the beaver invariably came out of the water
at a given point, and over a short slide worn on
the side of the house climbed up to the height
where they were to deposit their load, which was
carried in the fore paws. Then they edged round
and put the mud-ball upon the house. From this
point they descended directly to the water, but
when they emerged with the next handful, they
came out at the bottom of the slide, and again
climbed up it.

The beaver often does a large amount of work

3

in a short time. A small dam may be built up in
a few nights, or a number of trees felled, or pos-
sibly a long burrow or tunnel clawed in the earth
during a brief period. In most cases, however,
beaver works of magnitude are monuments of old
days, and have required a long time to construct,
being probably the work of more than one gen-
eration. It is rare for a large dam or canal to be
constructed in one season. A thousand feet of
dam is the accumulated work of years. An aged
beaver may have lived all his life in one locality,
born in the house in which his parents were born,
and he might rise upon the thousand-foot dam
which held his pond and say, " My grandparents
half a dozen centuries ago commenced this dam,
and I do not know which one of my ancestors
completed it."

Although the beaver is a tireless and an effect-
ive worker, he does not work unless there is need
to do so. Usually his summer is a rambling vaca-
tion spent away from home. His longest period
of labor is during September and October, when
the harvest is gathered and general preparations
made for the long winter. Baby beavers take part

4

ftfo a

in the harvest-getting, though probably without
accomplishing very much. During most winters
he has weeks of routine in the house and ponds
with nothing urgent to do except sleep and eat.

He works not only tooth and nail, but tooth
and tail. The tail is one of the most conspicuous
organs of the beaver. Volumes have been written
concerning it. It is nearly flat, is black in color,
and is a convenient and much-used appendage.
It serves for a rudder, a stool, a prop, a scull, and
a signal club. It may be used for a trowel, but I
have never seen it so used. It serves one purpose
that apparently has not been discussed in print ;
on a few occasions I have seen a beaver carry a
small daub of mud or some sticks clasped between
the tail and the belly. It gives this awkward ani-
mal increased awkwardness and even an uncouth
appearance to see him humped up, with tail
tucked between his legs, in order to clasp some-
thing between it and his belly.

He is accomplished in the use of arms and
hands. With hands he is able to hold sticks and
handle them with great dexterity. Like any claw-
ing animal he uses his hands or fore paws, to dig

5

3

n

holes or tunnels and to excavate burrows and
water-basins. His hind feet are the chief propel-
ling power in swimming, although the tail, which
may be turned almost on edge and is capable of
diagonal movement, is sometimes brought into
play as a scull when the beaver is at his swiftest.
In the water beaver move about freely and ap-
parently with the greatest enjoyment. They are
delightfully swift and agile swimmers, in decided
contrast with their awkward slowness upon the
ground. They can swim two hundred yards under
water without once coming to the surface, and
have the ability to remain under water from five
to ten minutes. On one occasion a beaver re-
mained under water longer than eleven minutes,
and came to the top none the worse, apparently,
for this long period of suspended breathing.

It is in standing erect that the beaver is at his
best. In this attitude the awkwardness and the
dull appearance of all-fours are absent, and he
is a statue of alertness. With feet parallel and in
line, tail at right angles to the body and resting
horizontally on the ground, and hands held against
the breast, he has the happy and childish eager-

6

w

03
O

x5
D
O

Tt?orRin<j life

ness of a standing chipmunk, and the alert and
capable attitude of an erect and listening grizzly
bear.

The beaver is larger than most people imagine.
Mature male specimens are about thirty -eight
inches in length and weigh about thirty -eight
pounds, but occasionally one is found that weighs
seventy or more pounds. Ten mature males which
I measured in the Rocky Mountains showed an
average length of forty inches, with an average
weight of forty-seven pounds. The tails of these
ten averaged ten inches in length, four and a
half inches in width across the centre, and one
inch in thickness. Behind the shoulders the
average circumference was twenty -one inches,
and around the abdomen twenty-eight. Ten ma-
ture females which I measured were only a trifle
smaller.

There are twenty teeth; in each jaw there are
eight molars and two incisors. The four front
teeth of the beaver are large, orange - colored,
strong, and have a self-sharpening edge of enamel.
The ears are very short and rounded. The sense
of smell appears to be the most highly developed

7

Next

of

of the beaver's sense
ing appears to be the most informational. The
eyes are weak. The hind feet are large and
webbed, and resemble those of a goose. The sec-
ond claw of each hind foot is double, and is used
in combing the fur and in dislodging the parasites
from the skin. The fore paws of the beaver are
handlike, and have long, strong claws. They are
used very much after the fashion in which mon-
keys use their hands, and serve a number of
purposes.

The color of the beaver is a reddish brown,
sometimes shading into a very dark brown. Oc-
casional specimens are white or black. The
beaver is not a handsome animal, and when in
action on the land he is awkward. The black
skin which covers his tail appears to be covered
with scales; the skin merely has this form and
appearance, the scales do not exist. The tail
somewhat resembles the end of an oar.

The all-important tools of this workman are
his four orange - colored front teeth. These are
edge-tools that are adaptable and self-sharpening.
They are set in strong jaws and operated by

8

ti&t a

powerful muscles. Thus equipped, he can easily
cut wood. These teeth grow with surprising
rapidity. If accident befalls them, so that the
upper and the lower fail to bear and wear, they
will grow by each other and in a short time be-
come of an uncanny length. I have found several
dead beaver who had apparently died of starvation;
their teeth overlapped with jaws wide open and
thus prevented their procuring food. For a time
I possessed an overgrown tooth that was crescent-
shaped and a trifle more than six inches long.

Pounds considered, the beaver is a powerful
animal, and over a rough trail will drag objects of
twice his own weight or roll a log-section of gigan-
tic size. Up a strong current he will tow an eighty-
or one-hundred-pound sapling without apparent
effort. Three or four have rolled a one-hundred-
and-twenty-pound boulder into place in the dam.
Commonly he does things at opportune times
and in the easiest way. His energy is not wasted
in building a dam where one is not needed nor
in constructive work in times of high water. He
accepts deep water as a matter of fact and con-
structs dams to make shallow places deep.

9

Beaver food is largely inner bark of deciduous
or broad -leaved trees. Foremost among these
trees which they use for food is the aspen, al-
though the cottonwood and willow are eaten
almost as freely. The bark of the birch, alder,
maple, box-elder, and a number of other trees
is also used. Except in times of dire emergency
the beaver will not eat the bark of the pine,
spruce, or fir tree. It is fortunate that the trees
which the beaver fell and use for food or build-
ing purposes are water-loving trees, which not
only sprout from both stump and root, but grow
with exceeding rapidity. Among other lesser
foods used are berries, mushrooms, sedge, grass,
and the leaves and stalks of a number of plants.
In winter dried grass and leaves are sometimes
used, and in this season the rootstocks of the pond-
lily and the roots of the willow, alder, birch, and
other water-loving trees that may be got from the
bottom of the pond. Beaver are vegetarians; they
do not eat fish or flesh.

Apparently beaver prefer to cut trees that are
less than six inches in diameter, and where slen-
der poles abound it is rare for anything to be cut

10

lifc a

of more than four inches. But it is not uncom-
mon to see trees felled that are from twelve to
fifteen inches in diameter. In my possession are
three beaver - cut stumps each of which has a
greater diameter than eighteen inches, the largest
being thirty-four inches. The largest beaver-cut
stump that I have ever measured was on the
Jefferson River in Montana, near the mouth of
Pipestone Creek. This was three feet six inches
in diameter.

The beaver sits upright with fore paws against
the tree, or clasping it; half squatting on his hind
legs, with tail either extending behind as a prop
or folded beneath him as a seat, he tilts his head
from side to side and makes deep bites into the
tree about sixteen inches above the ground. In
the overwhelming majority of beaver-cut trees
that I have seen, most of the cutting was done
from one side, — from one seat as it were. Though
the notch taken out was rudely done, it was after
the fashion of the axe -man. The beaver bites
above and below, then, driving his teeth behind
the piece thus cut off, will wedge, pry, or pull out
the chip. Ofttimes in doing this he appears to

ii

use his jaw as a lever. With the aspen, or with
other trees equally soft, about one hour is re-
quired to gnaw down a four-inch sapling. With
one bite he will snip off a limb from half to three
quarters of an inch in diameter.

After a tree is felled on land, the limbs are cut
off and the trunk is gnawed into sections. The
length of these sections appears to depend upon
the size of the tree-trunk and also the distance
to the water, the number of beaver to assist in
its transportation, and the character of the trail.
Commonly a six- or eight-inch tree is cut into
lengths of about four to six feet. If the tree falls
into the water of the pond or the canal, it is, if the
limbs are not too long, transported butt foremost
to the desired spot in its uncut, untrimmed en-
tirety. Ofttimes with a large tree the trunk is left
and only the limbs taken.

The green wood which the beaver uses for his
winter's food - supply is stored on the bottom of
the pond. How does he sink it to the bottom?
There is an old and oft-repeated tale which says
that the beaver sucks the air from the green wood
so as to sink it promptly. Another tale has it that

12

the beaver dives to the bottom carrying with him
a green stick which he thrusts into the mud and
it is thus anchored. Apparently the method is a
simple one. The green wood stored is almost as
heavy as water, and once in the pond it becomes
water-logged and sinks in a short time; however,
the first pieces stored are commonly large, heavy
chunks, which are forced to the bottom by piling
others on top of them. Frequently the first few
pieces of the food-pile consist of entire trees, limbs
and all. These usually are placed in a rude circle
with butts inward and tops outward. This forms
an entangling foundation which holds in place the
smaller stuff piled thereon.

Most willows by beaver colonies are small and
comparatively light. These do not sink readily,
are not easily managed, and are rarely used in
the bottom of the pile. Commonly, when these
light cuttings are gathered into the food-pile, they
are laid on top, where numerous up -thrusting
limbs entangle and hold them. The foundation
and larger portion of the food-pile are formed of
heavy pieces of aspen, alder, or some other stream-
side tree, which cannot be moved out of place by

13

3n

an ordinary wind or water - current and which
quickly sink to the bottom.

Among enemies of this fur-clad fellow are the
wolverine, the otter, the lion, the lynx, the coyote,
the wolf, and the bear. Hawks and owls occasion-
ally capture a young beaver. Beaver spend much
time dressing their fur and bathing, as they are
harassed by lice and other parasites. At rare in-
tervals they are afflicted with disease. They live
from twelve to fifteen years and sometimes longer.
Man is the worst enemy of the beaver.

A thousand trappers unite to tell the same
pitiable tale of a trapped beaver's last moments.
If the animal has not succeeded in drowning him-
self or tearing off a foot and escaping, the trapper
smashes the beaver's head with his hatchet. The
beaver, instead of trying to rend the man with
sharp cutting teeth, raises himself and with up-
raised hand tries to ward off the death-blow. In-
stead of one blow, a young trapper frequently has
to give two or three, but the beaver receives them
without a struggle or a sound, and dies while
vainly trying to shield his head with both hands.

Justly renowned for his industry, the beaver

TUorfiing ftfc a

is a master of the fine art of rest. He has many
a vacation and conserves his energies. He keeps
his fur clean and his house in a sanitary condi-
tion. Ever in good condition, he is ready at all
times for hard work and is capable of efficient
work over long periods. He is ready for emergen-
cies.

As animal life goes, that of the beaver stands
among the best. His life is full of industry and
is rich in repose. He is home-loving and avoids
fighting. His lot is cast in poetic places.

The beaver has a rich birthright, though born
in awindowless hut of mud. Close to the prime-
val place of his birth the wild folk of both woods
and water meet and often mingle. Around are the
ever-changing and never-ending scenes and si-
lences of the water or the shore. Beaver grow up
with the many-sided wild, playing amid the bril-
liant flowers and great boulders, in the piles of
driftwood and among the fallen logs on the for-
est's mysterious edge. They learn to swim and
slide, to dive quickly and deeply from sight, to
sleep, and to rest moveless in the sunshine ; ever
listening to the strong, harmonious stir of wind

IS

and water, living with the stars in the sky and the
stars in the pond ; beginning serious life when
brilliant clouds of color enrich autumn's hills;
helping to harvest the trees that wear the robes
of gold, while the birds go by for the southland
in the reflective autumn days. If Mother Nature
should ever call me to live upon another planet,
I could wish that I might be born a beaver, to
inhabit a house in the water.

Out: jfrienb fyt

ONE bright autumn afternoon I peered down
into a little meadow by a beaver pond.
This meadow was grass-covered and free from
willows. In it seven or eight beaver were at work
along a new canal. Each kept his place and ap-
peared to have a section in which he did his dig-
ging. For more than half an hour I watched
them clawing out the earth and grass-roots and
lifting it out in double handfuls and piling it in
an orderly line along the canal -bank. While I
was watching a worker at one end of this line,
two others clinched in a fight. The fighters made
no sound except a subdued guttural mumbling
as they rolled about in a struggle. The other
workers, to my astonishment, paid not the slightest
attention to this fight, but each attended to his
own affairs. After two or three minutes the bel-
ligerents broke away ; one squatted down breath-
ing heavily, while the other, with bloody tail,
dragged himself off and plunged into the pond.

19

This was the first beaver fight that I had ever
seen.

Beaver may well be called the silent workers.
No matter how numerous, or crowded, or busy
they are, their work goes on without a word and
apparently without a sign. Although I have seen
them at work scores of times, in the twilight and
in the daylight, singly, in pairs, and by the doz-
ens, doing the many kinds of work which beaver
perform, yet this work has always gone quietly
and without any visible evidences of manage-
ment. Each one is capable of acting independ-
ently. Since the quality of his work improves as
the beaver increases his experience, it appears
natural and probable that each colony of beaver
has a leader who plans and directs the work. I
am familiar with a number of instances which
strongly indicate leadership. In times of emerg-
ency, when an entire colony is forced to emigrate,
a beaver — and usually an aged one — takes the
lead, and wherever he goes the others willingly
follow.

Whatever may have been the custom of beaver
in the past, at present large numbers sometimes

20

cooperate in accomplishing community work. It
used to be believed, and possibly it was true, that
only the members of a family, or the beaver of
one house, united in doing the general work of
the colony. It was a common belief that seven
beaver inhabited a house ; perhaps eight was the
number of the Rocky Mountain region. At the
present time the number in a house is from one
to thirty.

Beaver have been driven from most of the
streams and lake-shores, and now maintain them-
selves with difficulty in the places which they
inhabit. In surviving they probably have had to
sacrifice a few old customs and to adopt some
new ones, and it is likely that these changes
sometimes call for larger houses so as to care for
the increased number of beaver which conditions
now compel to live in one locality. A number of
instances have come under my notice where bea-
ver were driven from their colony either by fire
or by the aggressiveness of trappers ; these moved
on to other scenes, where they cast their lot with
the beaver of another colony, and apparently
were received with every welcome. Immediately

21

3n

after the arrival of the immigrants, enlargements
were at once commenced, apparently to accom-
modate the new-comers permanently.

One autumn, while following the Lewis and
Clark trail with a pack horse in western Mon-
tana, I made camp one evening with a trapper
who gave me a young beaver. He was about one
month old, and ate twigs and bark as naturally
as though he had long eaten them. I named him
" Diver," and in a short time he was as chummy
as a young puppy. Of an evening he played about
the camp and often swam in the near-by water.
At times he played at dam -building, and fre-
quently displayed his accomplishment of felling
wonderful trees that were about the size of a
lead pencil. He never failed to come promptly
when I whistled for him. At night he crouched
near my camp, usually packing himself under the
edge of the canvas on which I spread my bed-
ding. Atop the pack on the horse's back he trav-
eled, — a ride which he evidently enjoyed. He
was never in a hurry to be taken off, and at mov-
ing time he was always waiting eagerly to be
lifted on. As soon as he noticed me arranging

22

a
o

z

55
D
en

;$Vimfc

the pack, he came close, and before I was quite
ready for him, he rose up, extending his hands in
rapid succession beggingly, and with a whining
sort of muttering pleaded to be lifted at once to
his seat on the pack.

He had a bad fright one evening. About one
hour before sundown we had encamped as usual
alongside a stream. He entered the water and
after swimming about for a time, taking a dozen
or so merry dives, he crossed to the opposite
side. In plain view, only fifty feet away, I watched
him as he busily dug out roots of the Oregon
grape and then stopped leisurely to eat them.
While he was thus engaged, a coyote made a dash
for him from behind a boulder. Diver dodged,
and the coyote missed. Giving a wail like a
frightened child, my youngster rolled into the
stream and dived. Presently he scrambled out
of the water near me and made haste to crawl
under my coat-tail behind the log on which I sat.

The nearest beaver pond was a quarter of a
mile upstream, yet less than five minutes had
elapsed from the time of Diver's cry when two
beaver appeared, swimming low and cautiously

23

3

in the stream before me. A minute later another
came in sight from downstream. All circled
about, swimming cautiously with heads held low
in the water. One scented the place where the
coyote had attacked Diver, and waddled out and
made a sniffing examination. Another came
ashore at the spot where Diver came out to me.
Apparently his eyes told him I was a part of the
log, but his nose proclaimed danger. After three
or four hesitating and ineffectual attempts to re-
treat, he plucked up courage and rose to full
height on hind legs and tail to stare eagerly at
me. With head well up and fore paws drooping,
he held the gaze for several seconds and then
gave a low whistle.

At this, Diver came forth from behind my
coat to see what was going on. The old one
started forward to meet him, but on having a
good look at me whirled and made a jumping
dive into the water, whacking the surface with
his tail as he disappeared. Instantly there fol-
lowed two or more splashes and a number of
tail-whacks upon the water, as though a beaver
rescue party were beating a retreat.

24

Out Jrtenfc 10*

At the end of my outing Diver became the
pet of two pioneer children on the bank of the
Snake River. He followed the children about
and romped with them. At three years of age he
was shot by a visiting hunter.

My experience with Diver and other beaver
pets leads me to believe that beaver are easily
domesticated. One morning in northern Idaho,
the family with whom I had spent the night took
me out to see a beaver colony that was within a
stone's throw of their fireplace. Three beaver
came out of the water within ten feet of us to eat
scraps of bread which the children threw on the
grass for them.

One day I placed myself between three young
beaver, who were eating on land, and the river
out of which they came. They were on one of
the rocky borders of the Colorado River in the
depths of the upper Grand Canon. They at-
tempted to get by me, but their efforts were not
of the " do or die " nature. Presently their mother
came to the rescue and attempted to attract my
attention by floating in the water near me in
a terribly crippled condition. I had seen many

25

n

birds and a few beaver try that clever ruse ; so I
allowed it to go on, hoping to see another act.
Another followed.

In it an old male beaver appeared. He swam
easily downstream until within a few yards of
me and then dived, apparently frightened. But
presently he reappeared near by and dived again.
While I was watching him, the youngsters edged
a few yards nearer the river. To stop them and
prolong the exhibition, I advanced close to them
as though to grab them. At this the mother
beaver struggled out of the water and set up a
tumbling and rolling so close to me that I thought
to catch her for examination. She dodged right
and left and reached the water. While this was
going on, the youngsters escaped into the river.
Mother beaver instantly recovered, and as she
dived gave the water a scornful whack with her
tail.

The beaver is not often heard. He works in
silence. When he pauses from his work, he sits
meditatively, like a philosopher. At times, how-
ever, when, in traveling, beaver are separated from
one another, they give a strange shrill whistle or

26

call. Occasionally this whistle appears to be a
call of alarm, suspicion, or warning. Sometimes
when alarmed, a young beaver gives a shrill and
frightened cry not unlike that of a lost human
child. On a few occasions I have heard, while
listening near a beaver house in the early sum-
mer, something of a subdued concert going on
inside, a purring, rhythmic melody. They have
a kind of love ditty also. This is a rhythmic
murmur and sigh, very appealing, and it seems
strangely elemental as it floats across the beaver
pond in the twilight.

It is probable that beaver mate for life. All
that is known concerning their ways indicates
that they are good parents. The young are usu-
ally born during the month of April. The number
varies from one to eight; probably four is the
number most common. A short time before the
birth of the youngsters, the mother invites the
father to leave, or compels him to do so, — or he
may go voluntarily, — and she has possession of
the house or burrow, probably alone, at the time
the youngsters are born. Their eyes are open
from the beginning, and in less than two weeks

27

they appear in the water accompanied by the
mother. Often I have investigated beaver colonies
endeavoring to determine the number of young-
sters at a birth. Many times there were four of
these furry, serious little fellows near the house
on a log that was thrust up through the water.
At other times from one to eight youngsters
sunned themselves on the top of the rude home.

One May, in examining beaver colonies, I saw
three sets of youngsters in the Moraine Colony.
They numbered three, and two, and five. One
mother in another colony proudly exhibited eight,
while still another, who had been harassed all
winter by trappers and who lived in a burrow in
the bank, could display but one.

It is not uncommon for young orphan beavers
to be cared for and adopted by another mother
beaver. I have notes of three mothers who, with
children of their own, at once took charge of
orphans left by the death of a neighbor. One
June a mother beaver was killed near my camp.
Her children escaped. The following evening a
new mother, with four children of her own adopted
them and moved from her own home, a quarter

28

jfrimb

of a mile distant, to the home of her dead neigh-
bor and there brought all the youngsters up.

Beaver have great fun while growing up. Posted
on the edge of the house, they nose and push each
other about, ofttimes tumbling one another into
the water. In the water they send a thousand
merry ripples to the shore, as they race, wrestle,
and dive in the pond. They play on the house,
in the pond, and in the sunshine and shadows of
the trees along the shore.

Beaver are mature the third summer of their
lives, and at this time they commonly leave the
parental home, pair, and begin life for themselves.
There are stories to the effect that the parents of
the youthful home-builders accompany the child-
ren to new scenes, help them select a building-
site, and assist in the construction of the new
house and dam. After this the parents return
home. This probably is occasionally true. Any-
way I once saw this program fairly well carried
out, and at another time in a limited manner.

The beaver is practical, peaceful, and industri-
ous. He builds a permanent house and keeps it
clean and in repair. Beside it he stores food-supply

29

3n

for the long winter. He takes thought for the
morrow. These and other commendable charac-
teristics give him a place of honor among the
hordes of homeless, hand-to-mouth folk of the wild.
During the winter he has but little to do except
bathe and eat his two or three meals a day from the
food he has stored in the autumn. Towards spring»
when his wild neighbors are lean, hungry, and
cold, he is fat and comfortable. In the spring he
emerges from the house, but then his only work
is occasionally to cut a twig for food. In the
summer he plays tourist. He visits other colonies,
and wanders up and down streams, going miles
from home. In the late summer or early autumn
he returns, makes repairs, and harvests food for
winter.

The beaver is a valuable conservationist, but
there are localities in which he cannot be toler-
ated. Although dead wood is rarely cut by the
beaver, many a homesteader has been disturbed
by his cutting off and carrying away green fence
posts. Recently beaver have returned to a few
localities and got themselves into bad repute by
felling fruit trees. Occasionally, too, in the West,

30

Jrimb

they have lost caste by persistently damming an
irrigation-ditch and diverting the water, despite
the fact that a court has given both the title and
the right to this water to some one else a mile
or so down the ditch.

In all logging operations, beaver never fail —
where there is opportunity — to cut trees up-
stream and float them down with the current.
Tree-cutting is an interesting phase of beaver
life. A beaver will go waddling dully from the
water to a tree he is about to cut down. All will
look about for enemies; one may be wise enough
— but the majority will not do so — to look up-
ward to see if the tree about to be felled is en-
tangled at the top. All appear to choose a com-
fortable place on which to squat or sit while
cutting.

Commonly when the tree begins to creak and
settle, the beaver who has done the cutting thuds
the ground a few times with his tail, and then
scampers away, usually going into the water.
Sometimes the near-by workers give the thudding
signal in advance of the one who is doing the
cutting. Now and then no warning signal is given,

and the logging beaver occasionally fells his tree
upon other workers with a fatal result. As with
axe-men, the beaver doing the cutting is on rare
occasions caught and killed by the tree which
he fells.

Rarely does the beaver give any thought to
the direction in which the tree will fall. In a few
instances, however, I have seen what appeared
to be an effort on the part of the beaver to fell
a tree in a given direction. From an uncomfort-
able place he cut the lowest notch on the side on
which he probably wanted the tree to fall. On
one of these occasions, the aspen tree selected
stood in an almost complete circle of pines. The
beaver took pains to cut the first and lowest notch
in this tree directly opposite the opening in the
pines. I have seen a number of instances of this
kind. And he will sometimes leave the windward
side of a grove on a windy day, and cut on the
leeward, so that the felled trees are not entangled
in falling.

Rarely does more than one beaver work at the
same time at a tree. In some instances, however,
if the tree be large, two or even more beaver will

32

Out

work at once. But after the tree has been felled,
ofttimes three or four beaver will unite to roll a
large section to the water. In doing this, some
may stand with paws against it and push, and
others may put their sides or hips against it. On
land, as in the water, small limb-covered trees are
dragged butt foremost so as to meet the least
resistance. Sometimes the beaver drags walking
backwards; at other times he is alongside the
tree carrying and dragging it forward.

Early explorers say that beaver do most of their
work at night. In this they are practically unani-
mous. However, in Long's Journal, written in
1820, beaver were reported at work in broad day-
light. A few other early writers have also men-
tioned this daylight work. They probably work
in darkness because that is the safest time for
them to be out. During dozens of my visits to
secluded localities, — localities which had not
been visited by man, and certainly not by trappers,
— I found beaver freely at work in broad day-
light. I am inclined to think that day work was
common during primeval times ; and that, although
the beaver now do and long have done most of

33

their work at night, in localities where they are
not in danger from man, they work freely during
daytime.

Both the Indians and the trappers have a story
that old beaver who will not work are driven from
the colony and become morose outcasts, slowly
living away the days by themselves in a burrow.
I have no evidence to verify this statement, and
am inclined to think that solitary beaver occasion-
ally found in abandoned colony-sites and else-
where are simply unfortunates, perhaps weighed
down with age, unable to travel far, with teeth
worn, the mate dead, without ambition to try, or
without strength to emigrate. It is more likely
that these aged ones voluntarily and sadly with-
draw from their cheerful and industrious fellows,
to spend their closing days alone. Although, too,
there were among Indians and trappers stones
of beaver slaves, I am without material for a story
of this kind.

The beaver is peaceful. Although the males
occasionally fight among themselves, the beaver
avoids fighting, and plans his life so as to es-
cape without it. Now and then in the water

34

Jrimfc

one closes with an otter in, a desperate struggle,
and when cornered on land one will sometimes
turn upon a preying foe with such ferocity and
skill that his assailant is glad to retreat. On two
occasions I have known a beaver to kill a bobcat.

Beaver are not equally alert. In many cases
this difference may be due to a difference in age
or experience. Beaver have been caught with
scars which show that they have been trapped
before, a few even having lost two feet in escap-
ing from traps. On the other hand, skillful trap-
pers have found themselves after repeated trials,
unable to catch a single beaver from a populous
colony. Sometimes in colonies of this kind, the
beaver even audaciously turned the traps upside
down or contemptuously covered them with mud.

Nor is the work of all beaver alike. The ditches
which one beaver digs, the house one builds, or
the dam one makes, may be executed with much
greater speed and with more skill than those of
a neighboring beaver. Many houses are crude
and unshapely masses, many dams haphazard in
appearance, while a few canals are crooked and
uneven. But the majority do good work, and are

35

quick to take advantage of opportunity, quick to
adjust themselves to new conditions, or to use the
best means that is available. Beaver probably
have made numbers of changes in their manners,
habits, and customs, and those changes undoubt-
edly have enabled them to survive relentless pur-
suit, and to leave descendants upon the earth.

The industry of the beaver is proverbial, and it
is to the credit of any person to have the dis-
tinction of working " like a beaver." Most people
have the idea that the beaver is always at work;
not that he necessarily accomplishes much at this
work, but that he is always doing something. The
fact remains that under normal conditions he
works less than half the time, and it is not un-
common for him to spend a large share of each
year in what might be called play. He is physic-
ally capable of intense and prolonged application,
and, being an intelligent worker, even though he
works less than half the time he accomplishes
large results.

anb

/•VV LL Indian tribes in North America appear
\>V to have had one or more legends concern-
ing the beaver. Most of these legends credit him
with being a worthy and industrious fellow, and
the Cherokees are said to trace their origin to a
sacred and practical beaver. Many of the tribes
had a legend which told that long, long ago the
Great Waters surged around a shoreless world.
These waters were peopled with beaver, beaver
of a gigantic size. These, along with the Great
Spirit, dived and brought up quantities of mud
and shaped this into the hills and dales, the moun-
tains where the cataracts plunged and sang, and all
the caves and canons. The scattered boulders and
broken crags upon the earth were the missiles
thrown by evil spirits, who in the beginning of
things endeavored to hinder and prevent the con-
structive work of creation.

39

The beaver has been found in fossil both in
Europe and in America. Remnants of the dugout
and the teeth of beaver, together with rude stone
implements of primitive man, have been found
in England. Near Albany, New York, gnawed
beaver wood and the remains of a mastodon were
dug up from about forty feet below the surface
in sediment and river ooze. Fossil beaver were of
enormous size.

Coming down to comparatively modern times,
the animal as we now know him appears to have
been distributed over almost all Asia, Europe,
and North America. There was no marked differ-
ence in the individuals that inhabited these three
continents. The beaver is probably extinct in
Europe, but in July, 1900, I found a piece of
wood floating in the Seine that had been recently
gnawed by a beaver. At this time I was assured
that not even a tame beaver could be found in
Europe. It is still found in parts of Siberia and
Central Asia. That form which inhabits South
America is very unlike those in the Northern
Hemisphere, and may be called a link between
the muskrat and the beaver.

40

Reference is made to the beaver in ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Herodotus makes
repeated mention of it. Pliny also gives a brief
account of this animal. In Germany, in 1103,
the right of hunting beaver was conferred along
with other special hunting privileges; and a bull
of Pope Lucius III, in 1 182, gave to a monastery
all the beaver found within the bounds of its
property. A royal edict issued at Berlin in March,
1725, insisted upon the protection of beaver.

Before the white man came, beaver — Castor
canadensis — were widely distributed over North
America, perhaps more widely than any other
animal. The beaver population was large, and
probably was densest to the southwest of Hudson
Bay and around the headwaters of the Missouri
and Columbia rivers. Their scantiest population
areas in the United States appear to have been
southern Florida and the lower Mississippi Val-
ley. This scantiness is attributed by early ex-
plorers to the aggressiveness of the alligators.
All the southern half of Mexico appears to have
been without a beaver population ; but elsewhere
over North America, wherever there were decid-

nous trees and water, and in a few treeless places
where there were only water and grass, the beaver
were found. Along the thousands of smaller
streams throughout North America there was
colony after colony, dam after dam, in close suc-
cession, as many as three hundred beaver ponds
to the mile. Lewis and Clark mention the fact
that near the Three Forks, Montana, the streams
stretched away in a succession of beaver ponds
as far as the eye could reach. The statements
made by the early explorers, settlers, and trappers,
together with my own observations, — which com-
menced in 1885, and which have extended pretty
well over the country from northern Mexico into
Alaska, — lead to the conclusion that the beaver
population of North America at the beginning of
the seventeenth century was upwards of one hun-
dred million. The area occupied was approxi-
mately six million square miles, and probably two
hundred beaver population per square mile would
be a conservative number for the general average.
In the United States there are a number of
counties and more than one hundred streams and
lakes named for the beaver ; upwards of fifty post-
42

anb

offices are plain Beaver, Beaver Pond, Beaver
Meadow, or some other combination that pro-
claims the former prevalence of this widely dis-
tributed builder. The beaver is the national
emblematic animal of Canada, and there, too,
numerous post-offices, lakes, and streams are
named for the beaver.

Beaver skins lured the hunter and trapper over
all American wilds. These skins were one of the
earliest mediums of exchange among the settlers
of North America. For two hundred years they
were one of the most important exports, and for
a longer time they were also the chief commodity
of trade on the frontier. A beaver skin was not
only the standard by which other skins were
measured in value, but also the standard of value
by which guns, sugar, cattle, hatchets, and cloth-
ing were measured. Though freely used by the
early settlers for clothing, they were especially
valuable as raw material for the manufacture of
hats, and for this purpose were largely exported.

From this animal were prepared many reme-
dies which in former times were believed to have
high medicinal value. Castoreum was the most

43

popular of these, and from it was compounded the
great cure-all. The skin of the beaver was thought
to be an excellent preventive of colic and con-
sumption; the fat of the beaver efficient in apo-
plexy and epilepsy, to stop spasms, and for various
afflictions of the nerves. Powdered beaver teeth
were often given in soup for the prevention of
many diseases. The castoreum of the beaver was
considered a most efficient remedy for earache,
deafness, headache, and gout, for the restoring of
the memory and the cure of insanity. Next in
importance to its skin, the beaver was valued for
the castoreum it yielded.

The old hunters, trappers, and first settlers fore-
cast with confidence the weather from the actions
of the beaver. This animal was credited with
being weather-wise to a high degree. From his
actions the nature of the oncoming winter was
predicted, and plans to meet it were made accord-
ingly. Faith in the beaver's actions and activities
as a basis for weather-forecastingVas almost abso-
lute. If the beaver began work early, the winter
was to begin early. If the beaver laid up a large
harvest, covered the house deeply with mud, and

44

raised the water-level of the pond, the winter was,
of course, to be a long and severe one.

Extensive autumn rambles in the mountains
with especial attention to beaver customs com-
pels me to conclude that as a basis for weather
prediction beaverdom is not reliable. In the course
of one autumn month in the mountains of Colo-
rado more than one hundred colonies were ob-
served. In many colonies work for the winter
commenced early. In others, only a few miles dis-
tant, preparations for the winter did not begin
until late. In some, extensive preparations were
made for the winter. In a few the harvest laid
up was exceedingly small. Thus in one month of
the same year I saw some beaver colonies pre-
paring for a long winter and others for a short
one, many preparing for a hard winter and others
almost unprepared for winter. From these varied
and conflicting prognostications, how was one
accurately to forecast the coming winter ? The
old prophets in one colony frequently disagreed
with aged prophets who were similarly situ-
ated, but in a neighboring colony. At one place
thirty or more beaver gathered an enormous

45

3n

quantity of food, sufficient, in fact, to have sup*
plied twice that number for the longest and most
severe winter. The winter which followed was as
mild a one as had passed over the Rocky Moun-
tains in fifty years. Not one tenth of the big
food-pile was eaten.

I have not detected anything that indicates that
the beaver ever plan for an especially hard win-
ter. Goodly preparations are annually made for
winter. Apparently the extent of the preparation
in any colony is dependent almost entirely upon
the number of beaver that are to winter in that
colony. Winter preparations consist of gathering
the food-harvest, repairing and sometimes raising
the dam, and commonly covering the house with
a layer of mud. Beaver display forethought, in-
telligence, and even wisdom, but being weather-
wise is not one of their successful specialties.
Local beaver now and then show unusual activity,
and unusually large supplies are gathered and
stored for the winter. This kind of work appears
to be local, not general. The cases in which un-
usually large preparations were made for the
winter could have been traced to an increased

46

population of the colony that showed these ac-
tivities. On the other hand, colonies with less
preparations one year than on the preceding one
probably had suffered a decrease of population.
Increase of population in a beaver colony may be
accounted for through the growing up of young-
sters, or by the arrival of immigrants, or both;
where the temporary inactivity of trappers in one
locality might allow the beaver colony in that
region to increase in numbers; or where the
beaver population of that colony might be in-
creased by the arrival of beaver driven from their
homes by aggressive hunters and trappers in
adjoining localities. At any rate, in the beaver
world, some colonies each year commence work
earlier than do others, and some colonies make
extensive preparations for the winter, while others
make but little preparation. This preparation ap-
pears to be determined chiefly by the number of
colonists and the needs of the colony.

The beaver hastened, if it did not bring, the
settlement of the country. Hunters and trappers
blazed the trails, described the natural resources,
and lured the permanent settlers to possess the

47

land and build homes among the ruins left by
the beaver. Early in the fur industry companies
were formed, the Hudson's Bay Company be-
coming the most influential and best known. Its
charter was granted by Charles II of England on.
the 2d day of May, 1669. This company finally
developed into one of the greatest commercial
enterprises that America has ever known. The
skin of the beaver furnished more than half its
revenue. There are many features in the history
of this company that have never been surpassed
in any land. For more than two hundred years it
held absolute sway over a country larger than
Europe, and for the first one hundred and fifty
years of its existence it was the government of the
territory where it ruled, and thus determined the
social and other standards of life within that ter-
ritory. One of the early officials of this company
declared that they were on the ground ahead
of the missionaries, and said that the initials
11 H. B. C." on the banner of the company might
well be interpreted as " Here before Christ."

Kingsford's History of Canada says that in the
eighteenth century, Canada exported a moderate

48

anb

quantity of timber, wheat, the herb called gin-
seng, and a few other commodities, but from first
to last she lived chiefly on beaver skins. Horace
T. Martin, formerly Secretary of Agriculture for
Canada, calls the beaver's part in Canadian de-
velopment "a subject which has from the in-
ception of civilization been associated with the
industrial and commercial development, and in-
directly with the social life, the romance, and to
a considerable extent with the wars of Canada."

The American Fur Company and the North-
western Fur Company were two large fur-gather-
ing enterprises whose trappers ranged afar and
who left their mark in the history and the devel-
opment of the Northwest. The colossal Astor
fortune really had its beginning in the wealth
which John Jacob Astor amassed chiefly through
the gathering and the sale of beaver skins.
Beaver skins are now economically unimportant
in commerce, but their value has already led to
the establishment of a few beaver farms.

To-day beaver are apparently extinct over the
greater portion of the area which they formerly
occupied, and are scarce over the remaining in-

49

habited area. Scattered colonies are found in the
Rocky Mountains and in the mountains of the
Pacific Coast, and there are localities in Canada
where they are still fairly abundant. In many
places in the Grand Canon of the Colorado they
are common. A few are found in Michigan and
Maine. Some years ago a few brooks in the
Adirondacks were successfully colonized with
these useful animals. They have reappeared in
Pennsylvania, and there probably are straggling
beaver all over the United States which, if pro-
tected, would increase.

There is a growing sentiment in favor of allow-
ing the beaver to multiply. In 1877 Missouri
passed a law protecting these animals; so did
Maine in 1885 and Colorado in 1899. Other
States to the total number of twenty-four have
also legislated for their protection. The Cana-
dian government has also passed protective laws.
A noticeable increase has already occurred in a
few localities. Beaver multiply rapidly under pro-
tection, as is shown in the National Parks of
both Canada and the United States.

J)tm

5 OR three hundred years the beaver has been
a popular subject for discussion. Fabulous
accounts have been given concerning his works,
and that which he has done has been exag-
gerated beyond recognition. Many of the de-
scriptions of him are grotesque, and many ac-
counts of his works are uncanny. His tail has
been made to do the work of a pile-driver, and
some of the old accounts credit him with driv-
ing stakes into the ground that were as large as
a man's thigh and five or six feet long. Stories
have been told that his tail was used as a trowel
in plastering the house and the dam. A few
writers have stated that he lived in a three-story
lodge. More than a century ago Audubon called
attention to the enormous mass of fabrications
that had been written concerning this animal,
and in 1771 Samuel Hearne of the Hudson's
Bay Company denounced a beaver nature-faker
in the following terms: "The compiler of the

53

Wonders of Nature and Art seems to have not
only collected all the fictions into which other
writers on the subject have run, but has so greatly
improved on them that little remains to be added
to his account of the beaver beside a vocabulary
of their language, a code of their laws, and a
sketch of their religion, to make it the most
complete natural history of that animal."

One might read almost the entire mass of
printed matter concerning the beaver without
obtaining correct information about his manners
and customs or an accurate description of his
works and without getting at the real character
of this animal. The actual life and character of
the beaver, however, the work which he does, the
unusual things which he has accomplished, are
really more interesting and place the beaver on
a higher plane than do all the fictitious tales and
exaggerated accounts written concerning him.

Mr. Lewis H. Morgan in his " American Beaver
and his Works " says : " No other animal has at-
tracted a larger share of attention or acquired by
his intelligence a more respectable position in
the public estimation. Around him are the dam,

54

the lodge, the burrow, the tree-cutting, and the
artificial canal, each testifying to his handiwork,
and affording us an opportunity to see the appli-
cation as well as the results of his mental and
physical powers. There is no animal below man
in the entire range of Mammalia which offers to
our investigation such a series of works, or pre-
sents such remarkable material for study and
illustration of animal psychology."

Mr. Morgan was for years a capable and pains-
taking student of the beaver. That which he has
written is so important a contribution concerning
the beaver that no one interested in this animal
can afford to be unacquainted with it. In the pre-
face of his book he says : " I took up the subject
as I did fishing, for summer recreation. In the
year 1861, I had occasion to visit the Red River
Settlement in the Hudson's Bay Territory, and
in 1862, to ascend the Missouri River to the
Rocky Mountains, which enabled me to com-
pare the works of the beaver in these localities
with those on Lake Superior. At the outset I
had no expectation of following up the subject
year after year, but was led on, by the interest

55

which it awakened, until the materials collected
seemed to be worth arranging for publication."

The greatest admirers of the beaver are those
who know him best. He bears acquaintance.
This cannot be had by merely looking at the
animal, nor by sympathetically studying his mon-
umental works. These works will of course im-
press one, but they give one at best only a trav-
eler's impression. Long and repeated visits to
the colony in its busy season appear to be the
best way to get at the character of the beaver.
The cubical contents of a dam may not even
suggest the obstacles overcome in its construc-
tion, the labor of getting the material, the dangers
avoided, the numerous unexpected difficulties
overcome. Five cords of green poles and limbs
in a neat pile in the pond by the beaver house
may tell that the harvest has been gathered, but
it does not tell that a part of this harvest may
have been gathered a mile away and skillfully
transported to the house with difficulty and amid
dangers. A part of the food-pile may have been
dragged laboriously uphill and along trails which
required months of labor to open ; or numerous

56

pieces in this pile may have been floated through
a canal of such magnitude that a generation was
required to construct it. Altogether, harvest-
gathering is interesting and heroic work on the
part of the beaver. In doing it he takes large
risks, for the harvest is usually gathered far
from the house and on the dangerous beaver
frontier.

For more than a quarter of a century I have
been a friendly visitor to his colonies, in which
I have lingered long and lovingly. That he makes
mistakes is certain, but that he is an intelligent,
reasoning animal I have long firmly believed.
As I said in " Wild Life on the Rockies," — "I
have so often seen him change his plans so wisely
and meet emergencies so promptly and well that
I can think of him only as a reasoner."

As evidence that he sometimes reasons, it may
be cited that he occasionally endeavors to fell
trees in a given direction ; that he often avoids
cutting those entangled at the top ; that some-
times he will, on a windy day, fell trees on the
leeward side of a grove; that he commonly avoids
felling trees in the heart of a grove, but cuts on

57

the outskirts of it. He occasionally dams a stream,
digs a canal, leads water to a dry place, and there
forms and fills a reservoir and establishes a home.
Often his house is built by a spring and thus the
danger from thick ice avoided. These are some
of the reasons for my believing him to be intel-
ligent.

Morgan speaks of the beaver as " endowed with
a mental principle which performs for him the
same office that the human mind does for man,"
and says, " The works of the beaver afford many
interesting illustrations of his intelligence and rea-
soning capacity," also, " In the capacity thereby
displayed of adapting their works to the ever- vary-
ing circumstances in which they find themselves
placed instead of following blindly an invariable
type, some evidence of possession on their part
vifree intelligence is undoubtedly furnished."

Mr. George J. Romanes has the following
opinion of the beaver: " Most remarkable among
rodents for instinct and intelligence, unques-
tionably stands the beaver. Indeed there is no
animal — not even excepting the ants and bees —
where instinct has risen to a higher level of far-

58

reaching adaptation to certain constant conditions
of environment, or where faculties, undoubtedly
instinctive, are more puzzlingly wrought up with
faculties no less undoubtedly intelligent. ... It
is truly an astonishing fact that animals should
engage in such vast architectural labors with
what appears to be the deliberate purpose of se-
curing, by such artificial means, the special bene-
fits that arise from their high engineering skill.
So astonishing, indeed, does this fact appear,
that as sober minded interpreters of fact we
would fain look for some explanation which would
not necessitate the inference that these actions
are due to any intelligent appreciation, either of
the benefits that arise from labor, or of the hydro-
static principles to which this labor so clearly
refers."

Mr. Alexander Majors, originator of the Pony
Express, who lived a long, alert life in the wilds,
pays the beaver the following peculiar tribute
in his "Seventy Years on the Frontier": "The
beaver, considered as an engineer, is a remark-
able animal. He can run a tunnel as direct as the
best engineer could do with his instruments to

59

guide him. I have seen where they have built a
dam across a stream, and not having sufficient
head water to keep their pond full, they would
cross to a stream higher up the side of the moun-
tain, and cut a ditch from the upper stream
and connect it with the pond of the lower, and do
it as neatly as an engineer with his tools could
possibly do it. I have often said that the beaver
in the Rocky Mountains had more engineering
skill than the entire corps of engineers who were
connected with General Grant's army when he
besieged Vicksburg on the banks of the Missis-
sippi. The beaver would never have attempted
to turn the Mississippi into a canal to change its
channel without first making a dam across the
channel below the point of starting the canal.
The beaver, as I have said, rivals and sometimes
even excels the ingenuity of man."

Longfellow translates the spirit of the beaver
world into words, and enables one in imagination
to restore the primeval scenes wherein the beaver
lived : —

" Should you ask me, -whence these stories ?
Whence these legends and traditions,
60

gitn

With the odors of the forest,

With the dew and damp of meadows,

........ c>

Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
* In the bird's-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver.' '

And the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis, fleeing from
the wrath of Hiawatha, ran, —

" Till he came unto a streamlet
In the middle of the forest,
To a streamlet still and tranquil,
That had overflowed its margin,
To a dam made by the beavers,
To a pond of quiet water,
Where knee-deep the trees were standing,
Where the water-lilies floated,
Where the rushes waved and whispered.

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
On the dam of trunks and branches,
Through whose chinks the water spouted,
O'er whose summit flowed the streamlet.
From the bottom rose the beaver,
Looked with two great eyes of wonder,
Eyes that seemed to ask a question,
At the stranger Pau-Puk-Keewis."

©am

(HI

ILLIONS of beaver ponds graced Amer-
ica's wild gardens at the time the first
settlers came. These ragged and poetic ponds
varied in length from a few feet to one mile, and
in area they were from one hundred acres down
to a miniature pond that half a dozen merry child-
ren might encircle. These ponds were formed by
dams built by beaver, and the dams varied greatly
in size and were made of poles variously combined
with sticks, stones, trash, rushes, and earth.

In the Bad Lands of Dakota I saw two dams
that were made of chunks of coal. This material
had caved from a near-by bluff. I have noticed a
few that were constructed of cobble-stones. The
water-front of these dams was filled and covered
with clay, and they were the work of "grass
beavers," — beaver that subsist chiefly on grass,
and that live in localities almost destitute of
trees.

It is doubtful if a dam is ever made by felling

65

logs or large trees across the stream. I have, how-
ever, seen a few real log dams, but in these the
logs were placed parallel to the flow of water.
One of these was in the Sawtooth Mountains of
Idaho. Here a snow-slide swept several hundred
trees down the mountain. This wreckage was
piled on the bank of a stream. Beaver in a colony
a short distance away accepted this gift of the
gods, and of these unwieldy logs built a dam
about two hundred feet downstream from where
the avalanche had piled the logs. This dam was
a massive affair, about forty feet long and eight
feet high. It really appeared more like a logjam
than a dam, but it served the purpose intended
and raised the level of the river so that the water
overflowed to one side and spread in a broad
sheet against a cliff and through a grove of as-
pens, which the beaver proceeded to harvest.

The majority of dams are made of slender
green poles which are placed lengthwise with the
flow for the bottom, and set braced with the end
upstream a foot or so higher than the down-
stream end. With these there are occasionally
used small limby trees. The large end of the tree

66

is placed upstream, and the small bushy end
downstream. If in a current these sometimes are
weighed down with mud or stones. Short, stout
sticks and long, slender poles are deftly mingled
in the dam as it rises. The poles overlie, and
many completed dams appear as though made
of gigantic inclined half-closed shears and com-
passes of poles. Thus a dam is doubly braced. The
weight against it is resisted both by the end-on
poles that are parallel to the flow and by those
set at an angle to it.

The shape and the material of a dam are de-
pendent on a number of things: the nature of
the place where built, the kind of materials avail-
able for its building, the purpose it is intended
to serve, and the relation it may have to dams
already constructed. Sometimes a small dam will
be made — that may ultimately become a big one
— by simply digging a ditch across the stream
or basin and piling the excavated material into a
dam.

Beaver, like men, are unequal in their skill,
both in planning and in doing work, and the work
of most beaver falls short of perfection. Errors are

67

not uncommon. More than one colony has com-
menced a dam apparently without knowing that
there was not sufficient available material to com-
plete it. Others have built in the wrong places,
and have thus failed to flood the area which they
desired to reach or cover with water. Occasion-
ally the difficulties of construction have been too
great for the beaver who attempted it, and the
dam has been abandoned in an incomplete state.
Now and then a weak dam breaks, or a strong
one is swept out by a flood.

But why do beaver need or want the pond which
the dam forms ? They need it for the purpose of
maintaining water of sufficient depth and area to
enable them to move about in safety, and to trans-
port their food-supplies with the greatest ease.
Above all, the pond is a place of refuge into which
the beaver can constantly plunge and have secur-
ity from his numerous and ever watchful enemies.
The house-entrance must be kept water-covered.
In the water the beaver is in his element. On the
land he is a child lost in the wilds. He has ex-
tremely short legs and a heavy body. His make-
up fits him for movement in the water. He is a

68

©am

graceful swimmer, and in the water can move
easily and evade enemies ; while on land he is an
awkward lubber, moves slowly, and is easily over-
taken. Water of sufficient depth and area, then,
is essential to the life and happiness of the beaver.
To have this at all times it is necessary, in local-
ities where the supply is at times insufficient, to
maintain it by means of dams and ponds.

Deep ponds are needed around the house;
shallow ponds with shores in near-by groves
facilitate far-away logging. Dams are placed
across streams whose waters are to be led away
through new channels and made to serve else-
where in canals or ponds. Dams are made across
inclined canals to catch and hold water in them.
Streams are beaver's avenues of travel. Along
shallow streams in a beaver country it is not un-
common to see an occasional short dam which
forms a deep hole, which apparently is maintained
as a harbor or place of safety into which travel-
ing beaver may dive and be made safe from
pursuit.

Most beaver dams are built on the installment
plan. They are the result of growth. The new

69

3n

dam is short and comparatively low. It is enlarge*
as conditions may require. As the trees in the
edge of the pond are harvested, the dam is built
higher and longer, so as to flood a larger area;
or as sediment fills the pond, the dam is from
time to time raised and lengthened in order to
maintain the desired depth of water. Thus it may
grow through the years until the possibilities of
the locality are exhausted. The dam may then be
abandoned. It may be used for a few years or it
may be used for a century. A gigantic beaver
dam may thus represent the work of several gen-
erations of beaver. It often occurs that one or
more generations may use a dam and yearly add
something to its size. By and by these beaver
may die or emigrate. The old dam remains, fall-
ing to ruin in places. Years go by and other
beaver come upon the scene. The old dam is
then used for the foundation for a new one. The
appearance of some old dams indicates that they
have been repeatedly used and abandoned.

New dams, being made largely of coarse mate-
rials, appear very unlike old ones. Decay, settling,
repairs, and other changes come rapidly. The

70

dam is built of poles to-day ; it speedily becomes
earthy and is planted by nature to grass, willows,
and flowers. On old, large dams it is not uncom-
mon to see old forest-trees. The roots of these
entangle the constructive materials, penetrate
deeply, and help to anchor securely the entire
dam.

In only a few cases are the water-fronts of
dams at once plastered or filled in with mud.
This is done only where there is a scarcity of
water. It is the aim of the beaver to raise the
water in the pond to a certain height and there
maintain it, the chief purpose of the dam being
to regulate the height or the depth of the water.
The water, in streaming through new dams, de-
posits therein quantities of sticks, trash, and sedi-
ment, so that in a year or two these choke the
holes, almost stop the leakage of the water, and
help to solidify the dam. The discharge from
dams is regulated by the beaver. In some in-
stances water leaks through a dam in numerous
places from bottom to top; in others it seeps
through only close to the top; and in still others
the dam is so solid that the water pours over the

3n

top in a thin sheet. In some cases, however, in-
stead of the water pouring over the entire length
of the dam the beaver force it to pour over in a
given stretch at one end or the other, or some-
times through a hole or tunnel. The concentra-
tion of the overflow at some one point in the dam
is commonly done either for the purpose of using
it in transportation or to force the water to out-
pour on a spot where it will least erode the
foundation of the dam. Occasionally beaver com-
pel the water to flow round the end of a dam,
which they raise sufficiently high for that purpose.
Sometimes they dig a waste-way for the water.

European beaver appear to have barely devel-
oped to the dam-building stage. Rarely did they
build even a small, unimportant dam. Nor did
all the American beaver build dams. At the time
the beaver population was most numerous and
widely distributed, probably not more than half
of them used the dam. However, those not using
the dam were living in places where the dam and
consequent pond were not needed. Dam-building
enormously increased the habitable beaver area.
There were, and are, thousands of brooks which

72

each year cease to flow for a period, yet on
these brooks are all other beaver requirements
except a permanent, sufficient water-supply. By
dam-building water is stored for to-morrow, or
stream-courses changed, and with the assistance
of canals water is diverted to a dry ravine where
a colony is established.

The dam is the largest and in many respects
the most influential beaver work. Across a stream
it is an inviting thoroughfare for the folk of the
wild. As soon as a dam is completed, it becomes
a wilderness highway. It is used day and night.
Across it go bears and lions, rabbits and wolves,
mice and porcupines; chipmunks use it for a
bridge, birds alight upon it, trout attempt to leap
it, and in the evening the graceful deer cast their
reflections with the willows in its quiet pond.
Across it dash pursuer arid pursued. Upon it
take place battles and courtships. Often it is
torn by hoof and claw. Death struggles stain it
with blood. Many a drama, romantic and pic-
turesque, fierce and wild, is staged upon the
beaver dam.

The beaver dam gives new character to the

73

landscape. It frequently alters the course of a
stream and changes the topography. It intro-
duces water into the scene. It nourishes new
plant-life. It brings new birds. It provides a har-
bor and a home for fish throughout the changing
seasons. It seizes sediment and soil from the
rushing waters, and it sends water through sub-
terranean ways to form and feed springs which
give bloom to terraces below. It is a distributor
of the waters; and on days when dark clouds
are shaken with heavy thunder, the beaver dam
silently breasts, breaks, and delays the down-rush-
ing flood waters, saves and stores them ; then,
through all the rainless days that follow, it slowly
releases them.

Most old colonies have many dams and ponds.
A dam is sometimes built for the purpose of
forcing water back and to one side into a grove
that is to be harvested for food. In many cases
water flows round the end of a dam, and in mak-
ing its way back to the main channel is inter-
cepted by another dam, then another; and thus
the water from one small brook maintains a clus-
ter or chain of pondlets.

74

The majority of beaver dams are as crooked
as a river's course. Now and then one is straight.
A few are built from shore to a boulder, from the
boulder to a willow-clump, and finally, perhaps,
from willow-clump to some outstretching penin-
sula on the further shore. It is not uncommon
for a short dam to be built and afterwards length-
ened with additions on each end which may
curve either down or up stream. Sometimes a
dam is built outward from opposite shores simul-
taneously by separate but cooperating crews of
beaver. In swift water these ends are forced down-
stream in building, so that when they are finally
joined midstream the dam curves noticeably down-
stream.

On one occasion I watched beaver commence
and complete a dam in moderately swift water
that when finished bowed strongly upstream.
This, however, was not the intention of the build-
ers. The material for this dam consisted of wil-
low and alder poles that were cut some distance
upstream. These were floated down as used.
This dam was begun against a huge boulder near
midstream, and built outward simultaneously to-

75

ward both shores. Despite the repeated efforts
of the builders to extend it in a straight line to
the shore, the flow of the water pushed these out-
building ends downward, and when they finally
reached the shore this fifty-odd feet of dam with
the boulder for a keystone had an arch that was
about fifteen feet in advance of the bases.

Not far from where I lived in the mountains
when a boy, the beaver built a dam. This had a
slight arch upstream. A few years later the dam
was doubled in length by building an extension
on the end which bowed downstream. It thus
stood a reverse curve. Later the dam was still
further lengthened by a comparatively straight
stretch on one end, and by a short, down-bowing
stretch on the other. Recent additions to this
dam consist of wings at the end which sweep up-
stream. The dam as it now stands reaches about
three fourths of the way around the pond which
it forms.

It is not uncommon for a dam to be planned
and built with an arch against the current or
against the water which it afterwards impounds.
The most interesting dam of this kind that I ever

76

saw was one across the narrow neck of a rudely
bell-shaped basin that was about two hundred
feet in length. The material for this dam came
from a grove of aspens that extended into one
side of the basin. The floor of this basin was
partly covered with a few inches of water. In start-
ing the dam the beaver evidently knew where
they wanted to build it. This was not by the
aspen grove where the materials were convenient,
where the dam would need to be about one hun-
dred and twenty feet long, but was about fifty
feet farther on, where a dam of only forty feet
was required. This dam when completed bowed
seven feet against the enclosed water. The
beaver commenced building at the end nearest
the grove of aspens, pulling and dragging the
poles the fifty feet to it. They laid these aspen
poles, which were two to five inches in diameter
and from four to twelve feet in length, at right
angles to the length of the dam, and usually
placed the large end upstream or against the cur-
rent. But the water was shallow, and the trans-
portation of these poles to the dam was difficult.
Accordingly a ditch or canal was dug from the

77

grove to the place by the dam where the work
was going on. This ditch was about twenty-five
inches wide and fifteen deep. The waters filled
it and thereby afforded an easy means of float-
ing or transporting the poles from the grove to
the place where they were being used. This
ditch was carried forward along the upper line
of the dam, and several feet in advance of the
spot where the outbuilding work was advanc-
ing. Upon the earth thrown up from this were
laid the upper or high ends of the poles. When
the dam was finally completed, it was approxi-
mately eight feet wide on the base and stood four
feet high. As soon as it was completed, the
beaver stuffed the water-front with mud and
grass roots, which were obtained by digging from
the construction ditch immediately in front of
the dam. In other words, they enlarged their
pole-floating ditch above the dam into a deeper
and wider channel, and used this excavated ma-
terial for strengthening and waterproofing the
dam.

The longest beaver dam that I have ever seen
or measured was on the Jefferson River near

78

o

£
o

Three Forks, Montana. This was 2140 feet long.
Most of it was old. More than half of it was less
than six feet in height; two short sections of it,
however, were twenty-three feet wide at the base,
five on top, and fourteen feet high.

ONE autumn I watched a beaver colony and
observed the customs of its primitive inhab-
itants as they gathered their harvest for win-
ter. It was the Spruce Tree Colony, the most
attractive of the sixteen beaver municipalities
on the big moraine on the slope of Long's
Peak.

The first evening I concealed myself close to
the beaver house by the edge of the pond. Just
at sunset a large, aged beaver of striking, patri-
archal appearance rose in the water by the house,
and swam slowly, silently round the pond. He
kept close to the shore and appeared to be scout-
ing to see if an enemy lurked near. On com-
pleting the circuit of the pond, he climbed upon
the end of a log that was thrust a few feet out
into the water. Presently several other beaver
appeared in the water close to the house. A few
of these at once left the pond and nosed quietly
about on the shore. The others swam about for

83

some minutes and then joined their comrades on
land, where all rested for a time.

Meanwhile the aged beaver had lifted a small
aspen limb out of the water and was squatted on
the log, leisurely eating bark. Before many min-
utes elapsed the other beavers became restless
and finally started up the slope in a runway.
They traveled slowly in single file and one by
one vanished amid the tall sedge. The old beaver
slipped noiselessly into the water, and a series of
low waves pointed toward the house. It was dark
as I stole away in silence for the night, and Mars
was gently throbbing in the black water.

This was an old beaver settlement, and the
numerous harvests gathered by its inhabitants
had long since exhausted the near-by growths of
aspen, the bark of which is the favorite food of
North American beaver, though the bark of the
willow, cottonwood, alder, and birch is also eaten.
An examination of the aspen supply, together
with the lines of transportation, — the runways,
canals, and ponds, — indicated that this year's
harvest would have to be brought a long distance.
The place it would come from was an aspen

84

grove far up the slope, about a quarter of a mile
distant from the main house, and perhaps a hun-
dred and twenty feet above it. In this grove I
cut three notches in the trunks of several trees
to enable me to identify them whether in the
garnered pile by a house or along the line of
transportation to it.

The grounds of this colony occupied several
acres on a terraced, moderately steep slope of a
mountain moraine. Along one side rushed a
swift stream on which the colonists maintained
three but little used ponds. On the opposite side
were the slope and summit of the moraine. There
was a large pond at the bottom, and one or two
small ponds, or water-filled basins, dotted each
of the five terraces which rose above. The entire
grounds were perforated with subterranean pas-
sageways or tunnels.

Beaver commonly fill their ponds by damming
a brook or a river. But this colony obtained most
of its water-supply from springs which poured forth
abundantly on the uppermost terrace, where the
water was led into one pond and a number of
basins. Overflowing from these, it either made a

85

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merry little cascade or went to lubricate a slide
on the short slopes which led to the ponds on
the terrace below. The waters from all terraces
were gathered into a large pond at the bottom.
This pond measured six hundred feet in cir-
cumference. The crooked and almost encircling
grass-grown dam was six feet high and four hun-
dred feet long. In its upper edge stood the main
house, which was eight feet high and forty feet
in circumference. There was also another house
on one of the terraces.

After notching the aspens I spent some time
exploring the colony grounds and did not return
to the marked trees until forty-eight hours had
elapsed. Harvest had begun, and one of the
largest notched trees had been felled and re-
moved. Its gnawed stump was six inches in di-
ameter and stood fifteen inches high. The limbs
had been trimmed off, and a number of these lay
scattered about the stump. The trunk, which
must have been about eighteen feet long, had
disappeared, cut into lengths of from three to six
feet, probably, and started toward the harvest
pile. Wondering for which house these logs were

86

intended, I followed, hoping to trace and trail
them to the house, or find them en route. From
the spot where they were cut, they had evidently
been rolled down a steep, grassy seventy-foot
slope, at the bottom of this dragged an equal dis-
tance over a level stretch among some lodgepole
pines, and then pushed or dragged along a nar-
row runway that had been cut through a rank
growth of willows. Once through the willows,
they were pushed into the uppermost pond. They
were taken across this, forced over the dam on
the opposite side, and shot down a slide into the
pond which contained the smaller house. Only
forty-eight hours before, the little logs which I
was following were in a tree, and now I expected
to find them by this house. It was good work to
have got them here so quickly, I thought. But
no logs could be found by the house or in the
pond! The folks at this place had not yet laid
up anything for winter. The logs must have gone
farther.

On the opposite side of this pond I found where
the logs had been dragged across the broad dam
and then heaved into a long, wet slide which

87

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landed them in a small, shallow harbor in the
grass. From this point a canal about eighty feet
long ran around the brow of the terrace and ended
at the top of a long slide which reached to the big
pond. This canal was new and probably had been
dug especially for this harvest. For sixty feet of
its length it was quite regular in form and had an
average width of thirty inches and a depth of four-
teen. The mud dug in making it was piled evenly
along the lower side. Altogether it looked more
like the work of a careful man with a shovel than
of beaver without tools. Seepage and overflow
from the ponds above filled and flowed slowly
through it and out at the farther end, where it
swept down the long slide into the big pond.
Through this canal the logs had been taken one
by one. At the farther end I found the butt-end
log. It probably had been too heavy to heave out
of the canal, but tracks in the mud indicated that
there was a hard tussle before it was abandoned.
The pile of winter supplies was started. Close
to the big house a few aspen leaves fluttered on
twigs in the water; evidently these twigs were
attached to limbs or larger pieces of aspen that

88

were piled beneath the surface. Could it be that
the aspen which I had marked on the mountain-
side a quarter of a mile distant so short a time
before, and which I had followed over slope and
slide, through canal and basin, was now piled on
the bottom of this pond? I waded out into the
water, prodded about with a pole, and found sev-
eral smaller logs. Dragging one of these to the
surface, I found there were three notches in it.

Evidently these heavy green tree cuttings had
been sunk to the bottom simply by the piling of
other similar cuttings upon them. With this
heavy material in the still water a slight contact
with the bottom would prevent the drifting of ac-
cumulated cuttings until a heavy pile could be
formed. However, in deep or swift water I have
noticed that an anchorage for the first few pieces
was secured by placing these upon the lower slope
of the house or against the dam.

Scores of aspens were felled in the grove where
the notched ones were. They were trimmed, cut
into sections, and limbs, logs, and all taken over
the route of the one I had followed, and at last
placed in a pile beside the big house. This har-

89

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vest-gathering went on for a month. All aboul
was busy, earnest preparation for winter. The
squirrels from the tree-tops kept a rattling rain
of cones on the leaf-strewn forest floor, the cheery
chipmunk foraged and frolicked among the with-
ered leaves and plants, while aspens with leaves
of gold fell before the ivory sickles of the beaver.
Splendid glimpses, grand views, I had of this
strange harvest-home. How busy the beavers
were ! They were busy in the grove on the steep
mountainside ; they tugged logs across the run-
ways; they hurried them across the water-basins,
wrestled with them in canals, and merrily piled
them by the rude house in the water. And I
watched them through the changing hours; I
saw their shadowy activity in the starry, silent
night; I saw them hopefully leave home for the
harvest groves in the serene twilight, and I
watched them working busily in the light of the
noonday sun.

Most of the aspens were cut off between thir-
teen and fifteen inches above the ground. A few
stumps were less than five inches high, while a
number were four feet high. These high cuttings

90

were probably made from reclining trunks of
lodged aspens which were afterward removed.
The average diameter of the aspens cut was four
and one half inches at the top of the stump.
Numerous seedlings of an inch diameter were
cut, and the largest tree felled for this harvest
measured fourteen inches across the stump. This
had been laid low only a few hours before I found
it, and a bushel of white chips and cuttings en-
circled the lifeless stump like a wreath. In fall-
ing, the top had become entangled in an alder
thicket and lodged six feet from the ground. It
remained in this position for several days and
was apparently abandoned; but the last time I
went to see it the alders which upheld it were
being cut away. Although the alders were thick
upon the ground, only those which had upheld
the aspen had been cut. It may be that the
beaver which felled them looked and thought
before they went ahead with this cutting.

Why had this and several other large aspens
been left uncut in a place where all were con-
venient for harvest ? All other neighboring aspens
were cut years ago. One explanation is that the

9i

beaver realized that the tops of the aspens were en-
tangled and interlocked in the limbs of crowding
spruces and would not fall if cut off at the bottom.
This and one other aspen were the only large
ones that were felled, and the tops of these had
been recently released by the overturning of some
spruces and the breaking of several branches on
others. Other scattered large aspens were left
uncut, but all of these were clasped in the arms
of near-by spruces.

It was the habit of these colonists to transfer
a tree to the harvest pile promptly after cutting
it down. But one morning I found logs on slides
and in canals, and unfinished work in the grove,
as though everything had been suddenly dropped
in the night when work was at its height. Coy-
otes had howled freely during the night, but this
was not uncommon. In going over the grounds
I found the explanation of this untidy work in
a bear track and numerous wolf tracks, freshly
moulded in the muddy places.

After the bulk of the harvest was gathered, I
went one day to the opposite side of the moraine
and briefly observed the methods of the Island

92

beaver colony. The ways of the two colonies were
in some things very different. In the Spruce Tree
Colony the custom was to move the felled aspen
promptly to the harvest pile. In the Island Col-
ony the custom was to cut down most of the
harvest before transporting any of it to the pile
beside the house. Of the one hundred and sixty-
two trees that had been felled for this harvest,
one hundred and twenty-seven were still lying
where they fell. However, the work of transport-
ing was getting under way ; a few logs were in
the pile beside the house, and numerous others
were scattered along the canals, runways, and
slides between the house and the harvest grove.
There was more wasted labor, too, in the
Island Colony. This was noticeable in the at-
tempts that had been made to fell limb-entangled
trees that could not fall. One five-inch aspen had
three times been cut off at the bottom. The third
cut was more than three feet from the ground,
and was made by a beaver working from the top
of a fallen log. Still this high-cut aspen refused
to come down and there it hung like a collapsed
balloon entangled in tree-tops.

93

Prowling hunters have compelled most beaver
to work at night, but the Spruce Tree Colony
was an isolated one, and occasionally its members
worked and even played in the sunshine. Each
day I secluded myself, kept still, and waited ; and
on a few occasions watched them as they worked
in the light.

One windy day, just as I was unroping myself
from the shaking limb of a spruce, I saw four
beaver plodding along in single file beneath.
They had come out of a hole between the roots
of the spruce. At an aspen growth about fifty feet
distant they separated. Though they had been
closely assembled, each appeared utterly obliv-
ious of the presence of the others. One squatted
on the ground by an aspen, took a bite of bark
out of it, and ate leisurely. By and by he rose,
clasped the aspen with fore paws, and began to
bite chips from it systematically. He was delib-
erately cutting it down. The most aged beaver
waddled near an aspen, gazed into its top for a
few seconds, then moved away about ten feet and
started to fell a five-inch aspen. The one rejected
was entangled at the top. Presently the third

94

totffl

beaver selected a tree, and after some trouble in
getting comfortably seated, or squatted, also began
cutting. The fourth beaver disappeared and I
did not see him again. While I was looking for
this one the huge, aged beaver whose venerable
appearance had impressed me the first evening
appeared on the scene. He came out of a hole
beneath some spruces about a hundred feet dis-
tant. He looked neither to right nor to left, nor
up nor down, as he ambled toward the aspen
growth. When about halfway there he wheeled
suddenly and took an uneasy survey of the open he
had traversed, as though he had heard an enemy
behind. Then with apparently stolid indifference
he went on leisurely, and for a time paused
among the cutters, which did nothing to indicate
that they realized his presence. He ate some bark
from a green limb on the ground, moved on, and
went into the hole beneath me. He appeared so
large that I afterward measured the distance be-
tween the two aspens where he paused. He was
not less than three and a half feet long and prob-
ably weighed fifty pounds. He had all his toes;
there was no white spot on his body ; in fact, there

95

was neither mark nor blemish by which I could
positively identify him. Yet I feel that in my
month around the colony I beheld the patriarch
of the first evening in several scenes of action.

Sixty-seven minutes after the second beaver
began cutting he made a brief pause ; then he
suddenly thudded the ground with his tail, hur-
riedly took out a few more chips, and ran away,
with the other two beaver a little in advance, just
as his four-inch aspen settled over and fell. All
paused for a time close to the hole beneath me,
and then the old beaver returned to his work.
The one that had felled his tree followed closely
and at once began on another aspen. The other
beaver, with his aspen half cut off, went into the
hole and did not again come out. By and by an
old and a young beaver came out of the hole.
The young one at once began cutting limbs off
the recently felled aspen, while the other began
work on the half-cut tree ; but he ignored the work
already done, and finally severed the trunk about
four inches above the cut made by the other.
Suddenly the old beaver whacked the ground
and ran, but at thirty feet distant he paused and

96

nervously thumped the ground with his tail, as
his aspen slowly settled and fell. Then he went
into the hole beneath me.

This year's harvest was so much larger than
usual that it may be the population of this colony
had been increased by the arrival of emigrants
from a persecuted colony down in the valley.
The total harvest numbered four hundred and
forty-three trees. These made a harvest pile four
feet high and ninety feet in circumference. A
thick covering of willows was placed on top of
the harvest pile, — I cannot tell for what reason
unless it was to sink all the aspens below reach
of the ice. This bulk of stores together with num-
erous roots of willow and water plants, which are
eaten in the water from the bottom of the pond,
would support a numerous beaver population
through the days of ice and snow.

When I took my last tour through the colony
everything was ready for the long and cold winter.
Dams were in repair and ponds were brimming
over with water, the fresh coats of mud on the
houses were freezing to defy enemies, and a boun-
tiful harvest was home. Harvest-gathering is full

97

of hope and romance. What a joy it must be to
every man or animal who has a hand in it ! What
a satisfaction, too, for all dependent upon a har-
vest, to know that there is abundance stored for
all the frosty days !

The people of this wild, strange, picturesque
colony had planned and prepared well. I wished
them a winter unvisited by cruel fate or foe, and
trusted that when June came again the fat and
furry young beavers would play with the aged
one amid the tiger lilies in the shadows of the
big spruce trees.

successive dry years had greatly reduced
the water-level of Lily Lake, and the con-
sequent shallowness of the water made a serious
situation for its beaver inhabitants. This lake
covered about ten acres, and was four feet deep
in the deepest part, while over nine tenths of the
area the water was two feet or less in depth. It
was supplied by springs. Early in the autumn of
1911 the water completely disappeared from about
one half of the area, and most of the remainder
became so shallow that beaver could no longer
swim beneath the surface. This condition exposed
them to the attack of enemies and made the
transportation of supplies to the house slow
and difficult.

In the lake the beaver had dug an extensive
system of deep canals, — the work of years. By
means of these deep canals the beaver were able
to use the place until the last, for these were full
of water even after the lake-bed was completely

101

exposed. One day in October while passing the
lake, I noticed a coyote on the farther shore stop
suddenly, prick up his ears, and give alert atten-
tion to an agitated forward movement in the
shallow water of a canal. Then he plunged into
the water and endeavored to seize a beaver that
was struggling forward through water that was
too shallow for his heavy body. Although this
beaver made his escape, other members of the
colony may not have been so fortunate.

The drouth continued and by mid-October the
lake went entirely dry except in the canals. Off in
one corner stood the beaver house, a tiny rounded
and solitary hill in the miniature black plain of
lake-bed. With one exception the beaver aban-
doned the site and moved on to other scenes, I
know not where. One old beaver remained.
Whether he did this through the fear of not
being equal to the overland journey across the
dry rocky ridge and down into Wind River, or
whether from deep love of the old home associa-
tions, no one can say. But he remained and en-
deavored to make provision for the oncoming
winter. Close to the house he dug or enlarged

102

LAKE-BED CANALS AT LILY LAKE, OCTOBER,

SECTION OF A 7 50- FOOT CANAL AT LILY LAKE
Here five feet wide and three feet deep

a well that was about six feet in diameter and
four feet in depth. Seepage filled this hole, and
into it he piled a number of green aspen chunks
and cuttings, a meagre food-supply for the long,
cold winter that followed. Extreme cold began
in early November, and not until April was there
a thaw.

Before the lake-bed was snow-covered, all the
numerous canals and basins which the beaver had
excavated could be plainly seen and examined.
The magnitude of the work which the beaver had
performed in making these is beyond compre-
hension. I took a series of photographs of these
excavations and made numerous measurements.
To the north of the house a pool had been dug
that was three feet deep, thirty feet long, and
about twenty wide. There extended from this a
canal that was one hundred and fifty feet long.
The food basin was thirty feet wide and four feet
deep. This had a canal connection with the house.
In the bottom of the basin was one of the feeble
springs which supply the lake. Another canal,
which extended three hundred and fifty feet in a
northerly direction from the house, was from three

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to four feet wide and three feet deep. The largest
ditch or canal was seven hundred and fifty feet
long and three feet deep throughout. This ex-
tended eastward, then northeasterly, and for one
hundred feet was five feet wide. In the remaining
six hundred and fifty feet it was three to four feet
wide. There were a number of minor ditches and
canals connecting the larger ones, and altogether
the extent of all made an impressive show in the
empty lake-basin.

Meantime the old beaver had a hard winter.
The cold weather persisted, and finally the well
in which he had deposited winter food froze to
the bottom. Even the entrance-holes into the
house were frozen shut. This sealed him in. The
old fellow, whose teeth were worn and whose
claws were bad, apparently tried in vain to break
out. On returning from three months' absence,
two friends and I investigated the old beaver's
condition. We broke through the frozen walls of
the house and crawled in. The old fellow was
still alive, though greatly emaciated. For some
time — I know not how long — he had subsisted
on the wood and the bark of some green sticks

104

which had been built into an addition of the house
during the autumn. We cut several green aspens
into short lengths and threw them into the house.
The broken hole was then closed. The old fel-
low accepted these cheerfully. For six weeks as-
pens were occasionally thrown to him, and at the
end of this time the spring warmth had melted
the deep snow. The water rose and filled the pond
and unsealed the entrance to the house, and again
the old fellow emerged into the water. The fol-
lowing summer he was joined, or rejoined, by a
number of other beaver.

In many localities the canals or ditches dug
and used by the beaver form their most necessary
and extensive works. These canals require enor-
mous labor and much skill. In point of interest
they even excel the house and the dam. It is re-
markable that of the thousands of stories concern-
ing the beaver only a few have mentioned the
beaver canals. These are labor-saving improve-
ments, and not only enable the beaver to live
easily and safely in places where he otherwise
could not live at all, but apparently they allow
him to live happily. The excavations made in

105

taking material for house or dam commonly are
turned to useful purpose. The beaver not only
builds his mound-like house, but uses the basin
thus formed in excavating earthy material for the
house for a winter food depository. Ofttimes, too,
in building the dam he does it by piling up the
material dug from a ditch which runs parallel
and close to the dam, and which is useful to
him as a deep waterway after the dam is com-
pleted.

In transporting trees for food-supply, water
transportation is so much easier and safer than
land, that wherever the immediate surroundings
of the pond are comparatively level the beaver
endeavors to lead water out to tree groves by
digging a canal from the edge of the pond to
these groves. The felled trees are by this means
easily floated into the pond. One of the simplest
forms of beaver canal is a narrow, outward exten-
sion of the pond. This varies in length from a
few yards to one hundred feet or more.

Another and fairly common form of canal is
one that is built across low narrow necks of land
which thrust out into large beaver ponds, or on

106

narrow stretches of land around which crooked
streams wander.

The majority of beaver ponds are comparatively
shallow over the greater portion of their area.
In many cases it is not easy, or even possible, to
deepen them. They may be so shallow that the
pond freezes to the bottom in winter except in
its small deeper portion. The shallow ponds are
made more usable by a number of canals in the
bottom. These canals assure deep-water stretches
under all conditions. Most beaver ponds have a
canal that closely parallels the dam. In some in-
stances this is extended around the pond a few
yards inside the shore-line. Two canals usually
extend from the house. One of these connects
with the canal by the dam, the other runs to the
place on the shore (commonly at the end of a trail
or slide) most visited by the beaver.

In Jefferson Valley, Montana, not far from
Three Forks, I enjoyed the examination of num-
erous beaver workings, and made measurements
of the most interesting system of beaver canals
that I have ever seen. The beaver house for
which these canals did service was situated on

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3«

the south bank of the river, about three feet above
the summer level of the water and about two
hundred feet north of the hilly edge of the valley.
From the river a crescent-shaped canal, about
thirty-five feet in length, had been dug halfway
around the base of the house. Connected with
this was a basin for winter food; this was five
feet deep and thirty-five feet in diameter. From
this a canal extended southward two hundred
and seven feet. One hundred and ten feet distant
from the house was a boulder that was about ten
feet in diameter. This was imbedded in about
two feet of soil. Around this boulder the canal
made a detour, and then resumed its comparatively
straight line southward.

Over the greater portion of its length this
canal was four feet wide, and at no point was it
narrower than three feet. Its average depth was
twenty-eight inches. For one hundred and forty-
seven feet it ran through an approximately level
stretch of the valley, and seepage filled it with
water. A low, semi-circular dam, about fifty feet
in length, crossed it at the one-hundred -and
forty-seven-foot mark, and served to catch and

108

run seepage water into it, and also to act as a wall
across the canal to hold the water. The most
southerly sixty feet of this canal on the edge of the
foothills ran uphill, and was about four feet deep
at the upper end, four feet higher than the end by
the house. The dam across it was supplemented
by a wall forty-eight feet further on. This wall
was simply a short dam across the canal, in a
part that was inclined, and plainly for the purpose
of retaining water in the canal. The upper part
of the canal was filled with water by a streamlet
from off the slope. Apparently this canal was
old, for there was growing on its banks near the
house, a spruce tree, four inches in diameter, that
had grown since the canal was made.

The wall or small dam which beaver build
across canals that are inclined represents an in-
teresting phase of beaver development. That
these walls are built for the purpose of retaining
water in the canal appears certain. They are
most numerous in canals of steepest incline,
though rarely less than twenty feet apart. I have
not seen a wall in an almost dead-level canal, ex-
cept it was there for the purpose of raising the

109

3n

height of the water. This wall or buttress is after
all but a dam, and like most dams it is built for
the purpose of raising and maintaining the level
of water.

Extending at right angles westward from the
end of the old canal was a newer one of two
hundred and twenty-one feet. A wall separated
and united the two. One hundred and sixty feet
of this new canal ran along the contour of a hill,
approximately at a dead level. Then came a wall,
and from this the last sixty-one feet extended
southward up a shallow ravine. In this part there
were two walls. The upper end of the sixty-one-
foot extension was nine feet higher than the
house, and four hundred and twenty-eight feet dis-
tant from it. The two-hundred-and-twenty-one-
foot extension was from twenty-six to thirty-four
inches wide, and averaged twenty-two inches
deep. The entire new part was supplied with
spring water, which the beaver had diverted from
a ravine to the west and led by a seventy-foot
ditch into the upper end of their canal. Thirty
feet from the end of the canal were two burrows,
evidently safe places into which the beaver could

no

retreat in case of sudden attack from wolves or
other foe. There were two other of these bur-
rows, one at the outer end of the old canal and
the other alongside the boulder one hundred and
ten feet from the house.

At the time I saw these canals, the only trees
near were those of an aspen grove which sur-
rounded the extreme end. It was autumn, and on
both tributary slopes by the end of the canal,
aspens were being cut, dragged, and rolled down
these slopes into the upper end of the canal, then
floated through its waters, dragged over and
across the walls, and at last piled up for winter
food in the basin by the house. In all probability
this long, large canal had been built a few yards
at a time, being extended as the trees near-by
were cut down and used.

Where beaver long inhabit a locality it is not
uncommon for them to have two or three distinct
and well-used trails from points on the water's
edge which lead into neighboring groves or tree-
clumps. These are the beaten tracks traveled by
the beaver as they go forth from the water for
food, and over which they drag their trees and

in

saplings into the water. On steep slopes by the
water these are called slides. This name is also
given to places in the dam over which beaver
frequently pass in their outgoings and incomings.
Commonly these trails avoid ridges and ground
swells by keeping in the bottom of a ravine;
logs are cut through and rolled out of the way,
or a tunnel driven beneath ; obstructions are re-
moved, or a good way made round them. Their
log roads compare favorably with the log roads of
woodsmen who cut with steel instead of enamel.
In most old beaver colonies, where the char-
acter of the bottom of the pond permits it, there
are two or more tunnels or subways beneath the
floor of the principal pond. The main tunnel be-
gins close to the foundation of the house, and
penetrates the earth a foot or more beneath the
water to a point on land a few feet beyond the
shore-line. If there are a number of small ponds
in a colony that are separated by fingers of land,
it is not uncommon for these bits of land to be
penetrated by a thoroughfare tunnel. These tun-
nels through the separating bits of land enable
the beaver to go from one pond to another with-

112

out exposing themselves to dangers on land, and
also offer an easy means of intercommunication
between ponds when these are ice-covered. Pond
subways also afford a place of refuge or a means
of escape in case the house is destroyed, the dam
broken, or the pond drained, or in case the pond
should freeze to the bottom. Commonly these
are full of water, but some are empty. On the
Missouri and other rivers, where there are several
feet of cut banks above the water, beaver com-
monly dug a steeply inclined tunnel from the
river's edge to the top of a bank a few feet back.
Most of this tunnel work is hidden and remains
unknown. A striking example was in the Spruce
Tree Colony, elsewhere described. These colon-
ists, apparently disgusted by having their ponds
completely filled with sediment which came down
as the result of a cloudburst, abandoned the old
colony-site. A new site was selected on a mo-
raine, only a short distance from the old one.
Here in the sod a basin was scooped out, and
a dam made with the excavated material. The
waters from a spring which burst forth in the
moraine, about two hundred yards up the slope

and perhaps one hundred feet above, trickled
down and in due time formed a pond. The fol-
lowing year this pond was enlarged, and an-
other one built upon a terrace about one hun-
dred feet up the slope. From year to year there
were enlargements of the old pond and the build-
ing of new pondlets, until there were seven on
the terraces of this moraine. These, together
with the connecting slides and canals, required
more water than the spring supplied, especially
in the autumn when the beaver were floating
their winter supplies from pond to pond. Within
the colony area, too, were many water-filled un-
derground passages or subway tunnels. One of
these penetrated the turf beneath the willows for
more than two hundred feet.

While watching the autumnal activities of this
colony, as described in another chapter, I broke
through the surface and plunged my leg into an
underground channel or subway that .was half
filled with water. Taking pains to trace this
stream downward, I found that it emptied into
the uppermost of the ponds along with the waters
from a small spring. Then, tracing the channel

114

upwards, I found that, about one hundred and
forty feet distant from the uppermost pond, it
connected with the waters of the brook on which
the old colony formerly had a place. This tunnel
over most of its course was about two feet be-
neath the surface, was fourteen inches in dia-
meter, and ran beneath the roots of spruce trees.
The water which the tunnel led from the brook
plainly was being used to increase the supply
needed in the canals, ponds, and pools of the
Spruce Tree Colony. The intake of this was in
a tiny pond which the beaver had formed by a
damlet across the brook. That this increased sup-
ply of water was of great advantage to the busy
and populous Spruce Tree Colony, there can be
no doubt. Was this tunnel planned and made for
this especial purpose, or was the increased water-
supply of the colony the result of accident by the
brook's breaking into this subway tunnel ?

The canals which beaver dig, the slides which
they use, the trails which they clear and establish,
conclusively show that these animals appreciate
the importance of good waterways and good roads,
— in other words, good transportation facilities.

Qpnmitf »e

LILY LAKE beaver house, in which the old
spent the drouthy winter, was a large
roughly rounded affair that measured twenty-two
feet in diameter. It rose only four feet above the
normal water-line. This house had been three
times altered and enlarged, and once raised in
height. Its mud walls were heavily reinforced with
polelike sticks, which were placed at the junctures
of the enlargements. The one large room was more
than twelve feet in diameter. Near the centre
stood a support for the upper part of the house.
This support was about one and a half by two
and a half feet, and was composed for the most
part of sticks. But few houses have this support ;
commonly the room is vaulted. The room itself
averaged two and a half feet high. It had four
entrances.

A house commonly has two entrances, but it
may have only one or as many as five. Thus the
way to the outer world from the inside of the

JIQ

3n

house is through one or more inclined passage-
ways or tunnels. The upper opening of these en-
trances is in the floor a few inches above the
water-level, and the lower opening in the bottom
of the pond under about three feet of water.
These extend at an angle through the solid
foundation of the house, are about one foot in
diameter and four to fifteen feet long, and are
full of water almost to floor-level. This dark, win-
dowless hut has no other entrance.

Most beaver houses stand in a pond, though
a number are built on the shore and partly in the
water, and still others on the bank a few feet
away from the water. The external appearance
and internal construction of the houses are in a
general way the same, regardless of the situation
or size. Most beaver houses appear conical.
Measured on the water-line, they are commonly
found to be slightly elliptical. The diameter on
the water-line is from five to thirty-five feet, and
the height above water is from three to seven feet.

A house may be built almost entirely of sticks,
or of a few sticks with a larger proportion of mud
and turf. In building, a small opening is left, —

1 20

or built around and over, — which is afterwards
enlarged into a room.

Houses that are built in a pond usually stand
in three or four feet of water. The foundation is
laid on the bottom of the pond, of the size in-
tended for the house, and built up a solid mass
to a few inches above water-level. This island-
like foundation is covered with a crude hemi-
sphere or dome-shaped house, the central portion
of the foundation forming the floor of the low-
vaulted room which is enclosed by the thick
house-walls. In building the house the beaver
provide a temporary support for the combined
roof and walls by piling in the centre of the floor
a two-foot mound of mud. Over this is placed a
somewhat flattened tepee- or cone-shaped frame
of sticks and small poles. These stand on the
outer part of the foundation and lean inward
with upper ends meeting against and above the
temporary support. The beaver then cover this
framework with two or three feet of mud, brush,
and turf, and thus make the walls and the roof
of the house. When the outer part of the house
is completed, they dig an inclined passageway,

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from the bottom of the pond up through the
foundation, into the irregular space left between
the supporting pile of mud and the walls. And
of this space they shape a room, by clawing out
the temporary support and gnawing off the in-
truding sticks. This represents the most highly
developed type of beaver house.

In most houses the temporary support is not
used, but a part of the wall is carried up to com-
pletion, and against it are leaned sticks, which
rest upon the edge of the remaining foundation.
A finished house of this kind has a slightly ellip-
tical outline. However, many a house is a crude
haphazard pile of material in which a room has
been burrowed.

The room is from one to three feet high, and
from three to twenty feet across. The room is a
kind of a burrow and is without either door or win-
dow. Half-buried sticks make a comparatively dry
floor, despite the fact that it is only a few inches
above water-level. Beaver sleep on the floor,
usually with tail bent along the side after the
fashion of a dozing cat, in a nest of shredded
wood, which they patiently make by thinly split-

122

ting and paring pieces of wood. Just why this
kind of bedding is used cannot be said, but prob-
ably because this material dries more quickly, is
more comfortable and more sanitary, and harbors
fewer parasites. However, a few beds are made
of grass, leaves, or moss.

But little earthy matter is used in the tip-top
of the house, where the minute disjointed air-holes
between the interlaced poles give the room scanty
ventilation.

Except in a few cases where house-walls are
overgrown with willows or grass, the erosive ac-
tion of wind and water rapidly thins and weak-
ens them. Hence the house must receive frequent
repairs. Each autumn it is plastered or piled all
over with sticks or mud. The mud covering
varies in thickness from two to six inches. The
mud for this purpose is usually dredged from the
bottom of the pond close to the foundation of the
house. It is carried up, a double handful at a
time, the beaver waddling on his hind legs as he
holds it with his fore paws against his breast. A
half-dozen or more beaver may be carrying mud
up at once. The covering not only thickens the

123

3n

walls and increases the warmth of the house, but
also freezes and becomes an armor of stone that
is impregnable to most beaver enemies. The
" mudding " of the house is a part of the natural
and necessary preparation for winter. It may also
be a special means of protection deliberately car-
ried out by the beaver. The fact that an occa-
sional thick-walled or grass-covered beaver house
was not thus plastered in autumn — perhaps be-
cause it did not need it — has led a few people
to affirm that beaver houses are not mud-covered
in the autumn. Many years of observation show
that most beaver houses do receive an autumnal
plastering, and the few that do not have this at-
tention usually have thick, well-preserved walls
and do not need it.

One autumn in Montana, of twenty-seven
beaver houses which I examined, twenty-one re-
ceived mud covering; three of the others were
thickly overgrown with willows and two were
grass-grown. Only one thin-walled house that
needed reinforcement did not receive it; and this
one, by the way, was broken into by a bear before
the winter had got fairly under way.

124

In the autumn of 1910 1 made notes concerning
eighteen houses. These I watched during Octo-
ber and November. Thirteen were plastered ; a
willow-grown one and a weed-grown one, both of
which had thick walls, were not plastered. The
remaining three were not greatly in need of ad-
ditional thickness, so received only a scanty cov-
ering of sticks. Two of these were broken into by
some animal during the winter, while none of the
others were disturbed.

Beaver frequently show good judgment in that
important matter of selecting a site for the house.
Ice and sediment are two factors with which the
beaver must constantly contend. In the pond the
house is commonly placed in deep water, and
apparently where the depth around it will not be
rapidly reduced by the depositing of sediment.
Keeping the house-entrance, the harvest-pile
basin, and the canals from filling with sediment
is one of the difficult problems of beaver life.

To guard against the rapid encroachments of
the deposits of sediment, one group of beaver,
apparently with forethought, built a dam that
formed a pond from the waters of a small spring

125

3n

which carried but little or no sediment I have
noticed a number of instances in which a pond
was made on a small streamlet with greater labor
than it would have required to form a pond in a
near-by brook. As there were a number of other
conditions favorable to the brook situation of the
house, the only conclusion I could reach was that
these selections for colony-sites were made with
the intention of avoiding the ever-encroaching
sediment, — for in some beaver ponds this sedi-
ment is deposited annually to the depth of sev-
eral inches.

Ice is one of the troubles of beaver existence.
It is of the utmost importance to the beaver that
he should have his house so situated that the ice
of winter does not close the entrance to it, and
also that the deep water in which his pile of
green provisions is deposited does not freeze
solid and thus exclude him from the food-
supply. The ice fills the pond from the top and
compels him to be constantly vigilant to save
himself from its encroachments. Many a beaver
home has been built alongside a spring, around
which the beaver dredged a deep hole and in this

126

deposited the winter food-supply. The constant
flow of the spring water prevented thick ice from
forming, both around the food-pile and between
it and the house-entrance.

Large numbers of beaver do not possess a
house. Beaver who live without a dam or pond
commonly do not build a house, but are content
with a burrow or a number of burrows in the
banks of the waters which they inhabit. In the
severe struggle to live, there is a tendency on
the part of the beaver to avoid the building of
dams and houses, as these reveal their presence
and put the aggressive trapper on their trail.

Many colonies have both houses and burrows.
Apparently the houses were used in the winter-
time, the burrows in summer. One beaver bur-
row which I examined was about one foot above
the level of the pond and twelve feet distant
from it. The entrance tunnels were sixteen feet
in length, and began a trifle more than three
feet under water near the edge of the pond. This
burrow measured five and a half feet long, about
half as wide, and seventeen inches high. It was
immediately beneath the outspreading roots of

127

an Engelmann spruce. The majority of beaver
burrows are about two thirds the size of this one.

One November I examined more than a score
of beaver colonies. There was no snow, but re-
cent cold had covered the pond with ice and
solidified the miry surroundings. Over the frozen
surface I moved easily about and made many
measurements. One of these colonies was a fairly
typical one. The colony was on a swift-running
stream that came down from the snowy heights,
three miles distant. The top of Long's Peak and
Mt. Meeker looked down upon the scene. The
altitude of this colony was about nine thousand
feet. The ponds were in part surrounded by semi-
boggy willow flats, with here and there a high
point or a stretch of bank that was covered with
aspens. The tops of a few huge boulders thrust
up through the water. All around stood guard a
tall, dark forest of lodge-pole pines. These swept
up the mountainside, where they were displaced
by a growth of Engelmann spruce which reached
up to timber-line on the heights above.

This colony had a number of ponds, with a
few short canals extending outward from them.

128

A conical house of mud and slender poles stood
in the larger pond. Above this pond there were
half a dozen pondlets, the uppermost of which
was formed across the brook by a semi-circular
dam. Over the outward ends of this dam the
water flowed and was caught in other ponds;
these in turn overflowed, the water traversing
two other ponds, one below the other, just above
the main one. Below the large pond were three
smaller ones in close succession. The dam of
each pond backed the water against the dam
above it.

The dam of the main pond was two hundred
and thirty feet long. Each end bent upward at a
sharp angle and extended a number of yards up-
stream. This dam measured five feet at its highest
point, but along the greater portion was only a
trifle more than three feet high. The central part
was overgrown with sedge and willows and ap-
peared old ; but the extreme ends appeared new,
and probably had been in part constructed within
a few weeks. The whole dam was formed of earth
and slender poles. The pond formed by it was
one hundred and eighty feet wide, and had an

129

3n

average length up and down stream of one hun-
dred and ten feet. The average depth was only
two feet

Near the centre of this large pond stood the
house, a trifle nearer to the dam than to the
upper edge of the pond. I measured it on the
water- or rather the ice-level. It took twenty-six
feet of rope to go around it. The top of the house
rose exactly five feet above the ice. The house
was built of a mixture of sods and willow sticks.
The ends of the sticks here and there thrust out
through the three-or-four-inch covering of mud
which the house had recently received. Wonder-
ing how much of the house was in the water be-
low the level of the ice, I thought to measure the
depth by thrusting a pole through the ice to the
bottom. Holding it in an upright position, I raised
it and brought it down with all my strength*
The pole went through the ice and so did I.
The water was three feet deep. This depth cov-
ered only a small area around the house and was
maintained by frequent digging. The house is
often plastered with this dredged material. Alto-
gether, then, the house from its lowest founda-

130

tion on the bottom of the pond to the conical
top was eight feet high. The foundation of this
house was made of turf, masses of grass roots,
and a small percentage of mud thickly reinforced
with numerous willow sticks. The floor was
mostly sticks. As the entrance tunnels were filled
with water to a point about three inches below
the floor-level, and as these were the only en-
trances or openings into the house, friend or foe
could enter only by coming up through one or
the other of these water-filled tunnels from the
bottom of the pond.

The single, circular, dome-like room of this
house was four and a half feet in diameter and
about two feet in height. Its ceiling was roughly
formed by a confused interlacing of sticks, which
stood at an angle. The spaces between were filled
with root-matted mud. The walls were a trifle
more than two feet thick, except around the coni-
cal top. Here was a small space, mostly of inter-
lacing sticks, the thickness of which was but one
foot. As very little mud had been used in this part,
there were thus left a few tiny air-holes. As I ap-
proached, there could be seen arising from these

holes the steamy and scented breath of the beaver
inhabitants within. Since the ventilation of beaver
houses is exceedingly poor, and as this animal
probably does not suffer from tuberculosis, it is
possible that ventilation is assisted, and some
of the impure air absorbed by the water, which
rises almost to the floor in the large entrance-
holes.

The early trappers from time to time noted
extended general movements or emigrations
among beaver, which embraced an enormous area.
They, as with human emigrants, probably were
seeking a safer, better home. Some of these move-
ments were upstream, others down ; commonly
away from civilization, but occasionally toward
it. For this the Missouri River was the great
highway. Limited emigrations of this kind still
occasionally occur.

The annual migration is a different affair. This
has been noted for some hundred and fifty years
or more, and probably has gone on for centuries.
This peculiar migration might be called a migra-
tory outing. In it all members of the colony
appear to have taken part, leaving home in June,

132

scattering as the season advanced. Rambles were
made up and down stream, other beaver settle-
ments visited, brief stays made at lakes, adven-
tures had up shallow brooks, and daring journeys
made on portages. The country was explored.
The dangers and restrictions imposed during the
last twenty-five years appear in some localities
to have checked this movement, and in others to
have stopped it completely. But in most colonies
it still goes on, though probably not usually en-
joyed by mothers and children except to a limited
extent.

By the first of September all have returned to
the home, or joined another colony or assembled
at the place where a new colony is to be founded.
This annual vacation probably sustained the health
of the colonists; they got away from the parasites
and the bad air of their houses. The outing was
taken for the sheer joy of it. Incidentally, it brought
beaver into new territory and acquainted them
with desirable colony-sites and the route thereto,
— useful information in case the colonists were
compelled suddenly to abandon the old home.

It is natural for the beaver to be silent. In

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3«

silence he becomes intimate with the elements,
and, while listening, hears and understands all
moods and movements that concern him. He is
a master in translating sound. It wakens or warns,
threatens or gladdens, and woos him back to
slumberland.

On the wild frontier in his fortress island home
in safety he sits and sleeps in darkness. He can-
not see outside, but the ever-changing conditions
of the surrounding outer world are revealed to
him by continuous and varying sounds that pene-
trate the thick windowless walls of his house. He
hears the cries of the coyote and the cougar, the
call of moose, the wild and fleeting laugh of the
kingfisher, the elemental melody of the ouzel, and
many an echo faintly from afar. He hears the
soft vibrations from the muffled feet of enemies ;
and, above his head, the raking threat of claws
upon the top of his house. Endlessly the water
slides and gently pours over the dam, and softly
ebbs around the pond's primeval shores. The
earthquake thunder warns of storm, the floods
roar; then through day and night the cleared and
calmed stream goes by. The wind booms among

134

(pnmtftee

the baffling pines, and the broken and leafless
tree falls with a crash! There is silence! Along
the stream's open way through the woods num-
berless breezes whisper and pause by the primi-
tive house in the water.

'* (Bttgineenng

that the supply of aspens near the
waters of the Moraine Colony close to my
home was almost exhausted, I wondered whether
it would be possible for the beavers to procure
a sufficient supply downstream, or whether they
would deem it best to abandon this old colony
and migrate.

Out on the plains, where cottonwoods were
scarce, the beavers first cut those close to the
colony, then harvested those upstream, sometimes
going a mile for them, then those downstream ;
but rarely were the latter brought more than a
quarter of a mile. If enemies did not keep down
the population of a colony so situated, it was only
a question of time until the scarcity of the food-
supply compelled the colonists to move either up
or down stream and start anew in a place where
food trees could be obtained. But not a move
until necessity drove them !

Not far from my home in the mountains the

139

inhabitants of two old beaver colonies endured
hardships in order to remain in the old place.
One colony, in order to reach a grove of aspens,
dug a canal three hundred and thirty-four feet
long, which had an average depth of fifteen inches
and a width of twenty-six inches. It ended in a
grove of aspens, which were in due time cut down
and floated through this canal into the pond,
alongside the beaver house. The other colony
endured dangers and greater hardships.

During the summer of 1 90x3 an extensive forest
fire on the northerly slope of Long's Peak wrought
great hardship among beaver colonies along the
streams in the fire district. This fire destroyed
all the aspens and some of the willows. In order
to have food while a new growth of aspens was
developing, the beavers at a colony on the Bier-
stadt Moraine were compelled to bring their
winter supply of aspens the distance of a quarter
of a mile from an isolated grove that had escaped
the fire. This stood on a bench of the moraine at
an altitude about fifty feet greater than that of
the beaver pond. Aspens from the grove were
dragged about two hundred feet, then floated

140

across a small water-hole, and from this taken up
the steep slope of a ridge, then down to a point
about one hundred feet from the pond. Between
this place and the pond was a deep wreckage of
fire-killed and fallen spruces. To cut an avenue
through these was too great a task for the beav-
ers ; so with much labor they dug a canal beneath
the wide heap of wreckage, and through this,
beneath the gigantic fallen trees, the harvested
aspens were dragged and piled in the pond for
winter food. The gathering of these harvests,
even by beavers, must have been almost a hope-
less task. In going thus far from water many of
the harvesters were exposed to their enemies, and
it is probable that many beavers lost their lives.
Beavers become strongly attached to localities
and especially to their homes. It is difficult to
drive them away from these, but the exhaustion
of the food-supply sometimes compels an entire
colony to abandon the old home-site, migrate,
and found a new colony. Some of the beavers'
most audacious engineering works are under-
taken for the purpose of maintaining the food-
supply of the colony. It occasionally happens

141

that the food trees near the water by an old colony
become scarce through excessive cutting, fires, or
tree diseases. In cases of this kind the colonists
must go a long distance for their supplies, or move.
They prefer to stay at the old place, and will work
for weeks and brave dangers to be able to do
this. They will build a dam, dig a new canal,
clear a difficult right-of-way to a grove of food
saplings, and then drag the harvest a long dis-
tance to the water; and now and then do all these
for just one more harvest, one more year in the
old home.

The Moraine Colony had lost its former great-
ness. Instead of the several ponds and the eight
houses of which it had consisted twenty years be-
fore, only one house and a single pond remained,
The house was in the deep water of the pond,
about twenty feet above the dam. A vigorous
brook from Chasm Lake, three thousand feet
above, ran through the pond and poured over the
dam near the house. The colony was on a delta
tongue of a moraine. Here it had been estab-
lished for generations. It was embowered in a
young pine forest and had ragged areas of willows

142

around it. A fire and excessive cutting by beav-
ers had left but few aspens near the water. These
could furnish food for no more than two autumn
harvests, and perhaps for only one. Other colon-
ies had met similar conditions. How would the
Moraine Colony handle theirs?

The Moraine colonists mastered the situation
in their place with the most audacious piece of
work I have ever known beavers to plan and ac-
complish. About one hundred and thirty feet
south of the old pond was a grove of aspens. Be-
tween these and the pond was a small bouldery
flat that had a scattering of dead and standing
spruces and young lodge-pole pines. A number
of fallen spruces lay broken among the partly ex-
posed boulders of the flat. One day I was aston-
ished to find that a dam was being built across
this flat, and still more astonished to discover
that this dam was being made of heavy sections
of fire-killed trees. Under necessity only will
beavers gnaw dead wood, and then only to a
limited extent. Such had been my observations
for years; but here they were cutting dead, fire
hardened logs in a wholesale manner. Why were

they cutting this dead wood, and why a dam across
a rocky flat, — a place across which water never
flowed? A dam of dead timber across a dry flat
appeared to be a marked combination of animal
stupidity, — but the beavers knew what they were
doing. After watching their activities and the
progress of the dam daily for a month, I realized
that they were doing development work, with the
intention of procuring a food-supply. They com-
pleted a dam of dead timber.

At least two accidents happened to the build-
ers of this dead-wood dam. One of these occurred
when a tree which the beavers had gnawed off
pinned the beaver that had cut it between its end
and another tree immediately behind the animal.
The other accident was caused by a tree falling
in an unexpected direction. This tree was lean-
ing against a fallen one that was held several feet
above the earth by a boulder. When cut off, in-
stead of falling directly to the earth it slid along-
side the log against which it had been leaning
and was shunted off to one side, falling upon and
instantly killing two of the logging beavers.

The dam, when completed, was eighty-five feet

144

long. It was about fifty feet below the main pond
and sixty feet distant from the south side of it.
Fifty feet of the new dam ran north and south,
parallel to the old one; then, forming a right
angle, it extended thirty-five feet toward the east.
It averaged three feet in height, being made al-
most entirely of large chunks, dead-tree cuttings
from six to fifteen inches in diameter and from
two to twelve feet long. It appeared a crude
windrow of dead-timber wreckage.

The day it was completed the builders shifted
the scene of activity to the brook, a short dis-
tance below the point where it emerged from the
main pond. Here they placed a small dam across
it and commenced work on a canal, through
which they endeavored to lead a part of the waters
of the brook into the reservoir which their dead-
wood dam had formed.

There was a swell or slight rise in the earth of
about eighteen inches between the reservoir and
the head of the canal that was to carry water
into it. The swell, I suppose, was not considered
by the beavers. At any rate, they completed
about half the length of the canal, then appar-

145

3n

ently discovered that water would not flow
through it in the direction desired. Other canal-
builders have made similar errors. The beavers
were almost human. This part of the canal was
abandoned and a new start made. The beavers
now apparently tried to overcome the swell in
the earth by an artificial work.

A pondlet was formed immediately below the
old pond by building a sixty-foot bow-like dam,
the ends of which were attached to the old dam.
The brook pouring from the old pond quickly
filled this new narrow, sixty-foot-long reservoir.
The outlet of this was made over the bow dam at
the point nearest to the waiting reservoir of the
dead-wood dam. The water, where it poured
over the outlet of the bow dam, failed to flow
toward the waiting reservoir, but was shed off to
one side by the earth-swell before it. Instead of
flowing southward, it flowed eastward. The beav-
ers remedied this and directed the flow by build-
ing a wing dam, which extended southward from
the bow dam at the point where the water over-
poured. This earthwork was about fifteen feet
long, four feet wide, and two high. Along the

146

upper side of this the water flowed, and from its
end a canal was dug to the reservoir.

About half of the brook was diverted, and this
amount of water covered the flat and formed a pond
to the height of the dead-wood dam in less than
three days. Most of the leaky openings in this
dam early became clogged with leaves, trash, and
sediment that were carried in by the water, but
here and there were large openings which the
beavers mudded themselves. The new pond was
a little more than one hundred feet long and
from forty to fifty feet wide. Its southerly shore
flooded into the edge of the aspen grove which
the beavers were planning to harvest.

The canal was from four to five feet wide and
from eight to twenty inches deep. The actual dis-
tance that lay between the brook and the shore
of the new pond was ninety feet. Though the
diverting of the water was a task, it required less
labor than the building of the dam.

With dead timber and the canal, the beavers
had labored two seasons for the purpose of get-
tingmoresupplies without abandoning the colony.
If in building the dam they had used the green,

147

3n

easily cut aspens, they would have greatly reduced
the available food-supply. It would have required
most of these aspens to build the dam. The only
conclusion I can reach is that the beavers not
only had the forethought to begin work to obtain
a food-supply that would be needed two years
after, but also, at the expense of much labor,
actually saved the scanty near-by food-supply of
aspens by making their dam with the hard, fire-
killed trees.

A large harvest of aspen and willow was
gathered for winter. Daily visits to the scene of
the harvest enabled me to understand many
of the methods and much of the work that other-
wise would have gone on unknown to me. Early
in the harvest an aspen cluster far downstream
was cut. Every tree in this cluster and every
near-by aspen was felled, dragged to the brook,
and in this, with wrestling, pushing, and pulling,
taken upstream through shallow water, — for most
mountain streams are low during the autumn.
In the midst of this work the entrance or inlet
of the canal was blocked and the bow dam was
cut. The water in the brook was almost doubled

148

in volume by the closing of the canal, thereby
making the transportation of aspens upstream
less laborious.

When the downstream aspens at last reposed
in a pile beside the house, harvesting was briskly
begun in the aspens along the shore of the new
pond. Then came another surprise. The bow
dam was repaired, and the canal not only opened,
but enlarged so that almost all the water in the
brook was diverted into the canal, through which
it flowed into the new pond.

The aspens cut on the shore of the new pond
were floated across it, then dragged up the canal
into the old pond. Evidently the beavers not only
had again turned the water into the canal that
they might use it in transportation, but also had
increased the original volume of water simply to
make this transportation of the aspens as easy as
possible.

Their new works enabled the colonists to pro-
cure nearly five hundred aspens for the winter.
All these were taken up the new canal, dragged
over the bow and the main dams, and piled in
the water by the house. In addition to these, the

149

aspens brought from downstream made the total
of the harvest seven hundred and thirty-two trees;
and with these went several hundred small willows.
Altogether these made a large green brush-pile
that measured more than a hundred feet in cir-
cumference, and after it settled averaged four feet
in depth. This was the food-supply for the on-
coming winter. The upper surface of this stood
about one foot above the surface of the water.

Five years after the completion of this dead-
wood dam it was so overgrown with willows and
grass that the original material — the dead tree-
trunks that formed the major portion of it — was
completely covered over. The new pond was used
but one season. All the aspens that were made
available by the dam of the pond were cut in one
harvest. The place is now abandoned, old ponds
and new.

(Kuineb Cofony

years ago, while studying glacia-
tion on the slope of Long's Peak, I came
upon a cluster of eight beaver houses. These
crude conical mud huts were in a forest pond far
up on the mountainside. In this colony of our
first engineers were so many things of interest
that the fascinating study of the dead Ice King's
ruins and records was indefinitely given up in
order to observe Citizen Beaver's works and ways.

A pile of granite boulders on the edge of the
pond stood several feet above the water-level, and
from the top of these the entire colony and its
operations could be seen. On these I spent days
observing and enjoying the autumnal activities
of Beaverdom.

It was the busiest time of the year for these
industrious folk. General and extensive prepara-
tions were now being made for the long winter
amid the mountain snows. A harvest of scores
of trees was being gathered and work on a new

153

iouse was in progress, while the old houses were
receiving repairs. It was a serene autumn day
when I came into the picturesque village of these
primitive people. The aspens were golden, the
willows rusty, the grass tanned, and the pines
were purring in the easy air.

The colony-site was in a small basin amid
morainal debris at an altitude of nine thousand
feet above the sea-level. I at once christened it
the Moraine Colony. The scene was utterly wild.
Peaks of crags and snow rose steep and high
above all ; all around crowded a dense evergreen
forest of pine and spruce. A few small swamps
reposed in this forest, while here and there in it
bristled several gigantic windrows of boulders.
A ragged belt of aspens surrounded the several
ponds and separated the pines and spruces from
the fringe of water-loving willows along the shores.
There were three large ponds in succession and
below these a number of smaller ones. The dams
that formed the large ponds were willow-grown,
earthy structures about four feet in height, and
all sagged downstream. The houses were grouped
in the middle pond, the largest one, the dam of

(Ruinefc

which was more than three hundred feet long.
Three of these lake dwellings stood near the
upper margin, close to where the brook poured
in. The other five were clustered by the outlet,
just below which a small willow-grown, boulder-
dotted island lay between the divided waters of
the stream.

A number of beavers were busy gnawing down
aspens, while others cut the felled ones into sec-
tions, pushed and rolled the sections into the
water, and then floated them to the harvest piles,
one of which was being made beside each house.
Some were quietly at work spreading a coat of
mud on the outside of each house. This would
freeze and defy the tooth and claw of the hun-
griest or the strongest predaceous enemy. Four
beavers were leisurely lengthening and repairing
a dam. A few worked singly, but most of them
were in groups. All worked quietly and with ap-
parent deliberation, but all were in motion, so
that it was a busy scene. " To work like a beaver ! "
What a stirring exhibition of beaver industry and
forethought I viewed from my boulder-pile !

At times upward of forty of them were in

155

sight. Though there was a general cooperation,
yet each one appeared to do his part without
orders or direction. Time and again a group of
workers completed a task, and without pause sil-
ently moved off, and began another. Everything
appeared to go on mechanically. It produced a
strange feeling to see so many workers doing so
many kinds of work effectively and automatically.
Again and again I listened for the superintend-
ent's voice ; constantly I watched to see the over-
seer move among them ;but I listened and watched
in vain. Yet I feel that some of the patriarchal
fellows must have carried a general plan of the
work, and that during its progress orders and di-
rections that I could not comprehend were given
from time to time.

The work was at its height a little before mid-
day. Nowadays it is rare for a beaver to work in
daylight. Men and guns have prevented daylight
workers from leaving descendants. These not only
worked but played by day. One morning for
more than an hour there was a general frolic, in
which the entire population appeared to take
part. They raced, dived, crowded in general

156

(Rutneb

mix-ups, whacked the water with their tails,
wrestled, and dived again. There were two or
three play-centres, but the play went on without
intermission, and as their position constantly
changed, the merrymakers splashed water all
over the main pond before they calmed down and
in silence returned to work. I gave most atten-
tion to the harvesters, who felled the aspens and
moved them, bodily or in sections, by land and
water to the harvest piles. One tree on the shore
of the pond, which was felled into the water, was
eight inches in diameter and fifteen feet high.
Without having even a limb cut off, it was floated
to the nearest harvest pile. Another, about the
same size, which was procured some fifty feet
from the water, was cut into four sections and
its branches removed ; then a single beaver would
take a branch in his teeth, drag it to the water,
and swim with it to a harvest pile. But four
beavers united to transport the largest section to
the water. They pushed with fore paws, with
breasts, and with hips. Plainly it was too heavy
for them. They paused. " Now they will go for
help," I said to myself, " and I shall find out who

157

the boss is." But to my astonishment one of them
began to gnaw the piece in two, and two more
began to clear a narrow way to the water, while
the fourth set himself to cutting down another
aspen. Good roads and open waterways are the
rule, and perhaps the necessary rule, of beaver
colonies.

I became deeply interested in this colony,
which was situated within two miles of my cabin,
and its nearness enabled me to be a frequent
visitor and to follow closely its fortunes and mis-
fortunes. About the hut-filled pond I lingered
when it was covered with winter's white, when
fringed with the gentian's blue, and while decked
with the pond-lily's yellow glory.

Fire ruined it during an autumn of drouth. One
morning, while watching from the boulder-pile, I
noticed an occasional flake of ash dropping into
the pond. Soon smoke scented the air, then came
the awful and subdued roar of a forest fire. I fled,
and from above the timber-line watched the storm-
cloud of black smoke sweep furiously forward,
bursting and closing to the terrible leaps of red
and tattered flames. Before noon several thou-

158

(Kuineb

sand acres of forest were dead, all leaves and
twigs were in ashes, all tree-trunks blistered and
blackened.

The Moraine Colony was closely embowered
in a pitchy forest. For a time the houses in the
water must have been wrapped in flames of
smelter heat. Could these mud houses stand this ?
The beavers themselves I knew would escape by
sinking under the water. Next morning I went
through the hot, smoky area and found every
house cracked and crumbling ; not one was in-
habitable. Most serious of all was the total loss
of the uncut food-supply, when harvesting for
winter had only begun.

Would these energetic people starve at home
or would they try to find refuge in some other
colony ? Would they endeavor to find a grove
that the fire had missed and there start anew ?
The intense heat had consumed almost every
fibrous thing above the surface. The piles of
garnered green aspen were charred to the water-
line ; all that remained of willow thickets and
aspen groves were thousands of blackened pickets
and points, acres of coarse charcoal stubble. It

159

was a dreary, starving outlook for my furred
friends.

I left the scene to explore the entire burned
area. After wandering for hours amid ashes and
charcoal, seeing here and there the seared car-
cass of a deer or some other wild animal, I came
upon a beaver colony that had escaped the fire.
It was in the midst of several acres of swampy
ground that was covered with fire-resisting wil-
lows and aspens. The surrounding pine forest
was not dense, and the heat it produced in burn-
ing did no damage to the scattered beaver houses.

From the top of a granite crag I surveyed the
green scene of life and the surrounding sweep of
desolation. Here and there a sodden log smould-
ered in the ashen distance and supported a tower
of smoke in the still air. A few miles to the east,
among the scattered trees of a rocky summit,
the fire was burning itself out; to the west the
sun was sinking behind crags and snow; near
by, on a blackened limb, a south-bound robin
chattered volubly but hopelessly.

While I was listening, thinking, and watching,
a mountain lion appeared and leaped lightly upon

1 60

(Ruineb CoConp

a block of granite. He was on my right, about one
hundred feet away and about an equal distance
from the shore of the nearest pond. He was in-
terested in the approach of something. With a
nervous switching of his tail he peered eagerly
forward over the crown of the ridge just before
him, and then crouched tensely and expectantly
upon his rock.

A pine tree that had escaped the fire screened
the place toward which the lion looked and where
something evidently was approaching. While I
was trying to discover what it could be, a coyote
trotted into view. Without catching sight of the
near-by lion, he suddenly stopped and fixed his
gaze upon the point that so interested the crouch-
ing beast. The mystery was solved when thirty
or forty beavers came hurrying into view. They
had come from the ruined Moraine Colony.

I thought to myself that the coyote, stuffed as
he must be with the seared flesh of fire-roasted
victims, would not attack them ; but a lion wants
a fresh kill for every meal, and so I watched the
movements of the latter. He adjusted his feet
a trifle and made ready to spring. The beavers

161

3n

were getting close; but just as I was about to
shout to frighten him, the coyote leaped among
them and began killing.

In the excitement of getting off the crag I
narrowly escaped breaking my neck. Once on
the ground, I ran for the coyote, shouting wildly
to frighten him off ; but he was so intent upon
killing that a violent kick in the ribs first made
him aware of my presence. In anger and excite-
ment he leaped at me with ugly teeth as he fled.
The lion had disappeared, and by this time the
beavers in the front ranks were jumping into the
pond, while the others were awkwardly speeding
down the slope. The coyote had killed three. If
beavers have a language, surely that night the
refugees related to their hospitable neighbors
some thrilling experiences.

The next morning I returned to the Moraine
Colony over the route followed by the refugees,
Leaving their fire-ruined homes, they had fol-
lowed the stream that issued from their ponds.
In places the channel was so clogged with fire
wreckage that they had followed alongside the
water rather than in it, as is their wont. At one

162

place they had hurriedly taken refuge in the
stream. Coyote tracks in the scattered ashes ex-
plained this. But after going a short distance
they had climbed from the water and again
traveled the ashy earth.

Beavers commonly follow water routes, but in
times of emergency or in moments of audacity
they will journey overland. To have followed
this stream down to its first tributary, then up
this to where the colony in which they found
refuge was situated, would have required four
miles of travel. Overland it was less than a mile.
After following the stream for some distance, at
just the right place they turned off, left the
stream, and dared the overland dangers. How
did they know the situation of the colony in the
willows, or that it had escaped fire, and how
could they have known the shortest, best way
to it?

The morning after the arrival of the refugees,
work was begun on two new houses and a dam,
which was about sixty feet in length and built
across a grassy open. Green cuttings of willow,
aspen, and alder were used in its construction.

163

Not a single stone or handful of mud was used.
When completed it appeared like a windrow of
freshly raked shrubs. It was almost straight, but
sagged a trifle downstream. Though the water
filtered freely through, it flooded the flat above.
As the two new houses could not shelter all the
refugees, it is probable that some of them were
sheltered in bank tunnels, while room for others
may have been found in the old houses.

That winter the colony was raided by som
trappers ; more than one hundred pelts were se-
cured, and the colony was left in ruins and almost
depopulated.

The Moraine Colony site was deserted for a
long time. Eight years after the fire I returned
to examine it. The willow growth about the
ruins was almost as thrifty as when the fire came.
A growth of aspen taller than one's head clung to
the old shore-lines, while a close seedling growth
of lodge-pole pine throve in the ashes of the old
forest. One low mound, merry with blooming
columbine, was the only house ruin to be seen.

The ponds were empty and every dam was
broken. The stream, in rushing unobstructed

164

(Kuitwb

through the ruins, had eroded deeply. This ero-
sion revealed the records of ages, and showed
that the old main dam had been built on the top
of an older dam and a sediment-filled pond. The
second dam was on top of an older one still. In
the sediment of the oldest — the bottom pond —
I found a spearhead, two charred logs, and the
skull of a buffalo. Colonies of beaver, as well as
those of men, are often found upon sites that
have a tragic history. Beavers, with Omar, might
say,—

" When you and I behind the veil are past,
Oh but the long long while the world shall last."

The next summer, 1893, the Moraine site was
resettled. During the first season the colonists
spent their time repairing dams and were con-
tent to live in holes. In autumn they gathered no
harvest, and no trace of them could be found
after the snow; so it is likely that they had re-
turned to winter in the colony whence they had
come. But early in the next spring there were
reinforced numbers of them at work establishing
a permanent settlement. Three dams were re-
paired, and in the autumn many of the golden

165

leaves that fell found lodgment in the fresh plaster
of two new houses.

In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses
was torn to pieces by some animal, probably a
bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About mid-
winter a prospector left his tunnel a few miles
away, came to the colony and dynamited a house,
and "got seven of them." Next year two houses
were built on the ruins of the two just fallen.
That year's harvest-home was broken by deadly
attacks of enemies. In gathering the harvest the
beavers showed a preference for some aspens that
were growing in a moist place about one hundred
feet from the water. Whether it was the size of
these or their peculiar flavor that determined
their election in preference to nearer ones, I could
not determine. One day, while several beavers
were cutting here, they were surprised by a moun-
tain lion which leaped upon and killed one of the
harvesters. The next day the lion surprised and
killed another. Two or three days later a coyote
killed one on the same blood-stained spot, and
then overtook and killed two others as they fled
for the water. I could not see these deadly attacks

1 66

(gutneb Cofonp

from the boulder-pile, but in each case the sight
of flying beavers sent me rushing upon the scene,
where I beheld the cause of their desperate retreat
But despite dangers they persisted until the last
of these aspens was harvested. During the winter
the bark was eaten from these, and the next season
their clean wood was used in the walls of a new
house.

One autumn I had the pleasure of seeing some
immigrants pass me en route for a new home in
the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have
been only visitors, or have come temporarily to
assist in the harvesting; but I like to think of
them as immigrants, and a number of things testi-
fied that immigrants they were. One evening I
had been lying on a boulder by the stream below
the colony, waiting for a gift from the gods. It
came. Out of the water within ten feet of me
scrambled the most patriarchal, as well as the
largest, beaver that I have ever seen. I wanted
to take off my hat to him, I wanted to ask him to
tell me the story of his life, but from long habit
I simply lay still and watched and thought in
silence. He was making a portage round a cas-

167

cade. As he scrambled up over the rocks, I noticed
that he had but two fingers on his right hand.
He was followed, in single file, by four others ;
one of these was minus a finger on the left hand.
The next morning I read that five immigrants
had arrived in the Moraine Colony. They had
registered their footprints in the muddy margin
of the lower pond. Had an agent been sent to
invite these colonists, or had they come out of
their own adventurous spirit? The day following
their arrival I trailed them backward in the hope
of learning whence they came and why they had
moved. They had traveled in the water most of
the time; but in places they had come out on the
bank to go round a waterfall or to avoid an
obstruction. Here and there I saw their tracks in
the mud and traced them to a beaver settlement
in which the houses and dams had been recently
wrecked. A near-by rancher told me that he had
been " making it hot " for all beavers in his meadow.
During the next two years I occasionally saw this
patriarchal beaver or his tracks thereabout.

It is the custom among old male beavers to
idle away two or three months of each summer

1 68

THE MORAINE HOUSE BEFORE AND AFTER ENLARGEMENT

(guinea

in exploring the neighboring brooks and streams,
but they never fail to return in time for autumn
activities. It thus becomes plain how, when an
old colony needs to move, some one in it knows
where to go and the route to follow.

The Moraine colonists gathered an unusually
large harvest during the autumn of 1909. Seven
hundred and thirty-two sapling aspens and several
hundred willows were massed in the main pond
by the largest house. This pile, which was mostly
below the water-line, was three feet deep and one
hundred and twenty-four feet in circumference.
Would a new house be built this fall? This un-
usually large harvest plainly told that either child-
ren or immigrants had increased the population
of the colony. Of course, a hard winter may also
have been expected.

No; they were not to build a new house, but
the old house by the harvest pile was to be en-
larged. One day, just as the evening shadow of
Long's Peak had covered the pond, I peeped over
a log on top of the dam to watch the work. The
house was only forty feet distant. Not a rip-
ple stirred among the inverted peaks and pines

169

in the clear, shadow-enameled pond. A lone
beaver rose quietly in the scene from the water
near the house. Swimming noiselessly, he made
a circuit of the pond. Then for a time, and with-
out any apparent purpose, he swam back and
forth over a short, straight course; he moved
leisurely, and occasionally made a shallow, quiet
dive. He did not appear to be watching anything
in particular or to have anything special on his
mind. Yet his eyes may have been scouting for
enemies and his mind may have been full of house
plans. Finally he dived deeply, and the next I
saw of him he was climbing up the side of the
house addition with a pawful of mud.

By this time a number of beavers were swim-
ming in the pond after the manner of the first
one. Presently all began to work. The addition
already stood more than two feet above the water-
line. The top of this was crescent-shaped and
was about seven feet long and half as wide. It
was made mostly of mud, which was plentifully
reinforced with willow cuttings and aspen sticks.
For a time all the workers busied themselves in
carrying mud and roots from the bottom of the

170

(Ruineb <Cofonj>

pond and placing these on the slowly rising ad-
dition. Eleven were working at one time. By and
by three swam ashore, each in a different direc-
tion and each a few seconds apart. After a min-
ute or two they returned from the shore, each
carrying or trailing a long willow. These were
dragged to the top of the addition, laid down, and
trampled in the mud. Meantime the mud-carriers
kept steadily at their work; again willows were
brought, but this time four beavers went, and, as
before, each was independent of the others. I
did not see how this work could go on without
some one bossing the thing, but I failed to detect
any beaver acting as overseer. While there was
general cooperation, each acted independently
most of the time and sometimes was apparently
oblivious of the others. These beavers simply
worked, slowly, silently, and steadily; and they
were still working away methodically and with
dignified deliberation when darkness hid them.

(pioneers

3 OFTEN wish that an old beaver neighbor of mine
would write the story of his life. Most of the
time for eighteen years his mud hut was among
the lilies of Lily Lake, Estes Park, Colorado. He
lived through many wilderness dangers, escaped
the strategy of trappers, and survived the danger-
ous changes that come in with the home-builder.
His life was long, stirring, and adventurous. If, in
the first chapter of his life-story, he could record
some of the strong, thrilling experiences which
his ancestors must have related to him, his book
would be all the better.

" Flat-top," my beaver neighbor, was a pioneer
and a colony-founder. It is probable that he was
born in a beaver house on Wind River, and it is
likely that he spent the first six years of his life
along this crag and aspen bordered mountain
stream. The first time I saw him he was leading
an emigrant party out of this stream's steep-

175

walled upper course. He and his party settled,
or rather resettled, Lily Lake.

Flat- top was the name I gave him because of
his straight back. In most beaver the shoulders
swell plumply above the back line after the out-
line of the grizzly bear. Along with this peculiar-
ity, which enabled me to be certain of his presence,
was another. This was his habit of gnawing trees
off close to the earth when he felled them. The
finding of an occasional low-cut stump assured
me of his presence during the periods I failed to
see him.

The first beaver settlement in the lake appears
to have been made in the early seventies, long
before Flat-top was born, by a pair of beaver who
were full of the pioneer spirit. These settlers ap-
parently were the sole survivors of a large party
of emigrants who tried to climb the rugged
mountains to the lake, having been driven from
their homes by encroaching human settlers. Af-
ter a long, tedious journey, full of hardships and
dangers, they climbed into the lake that was to
them, for years, a real promised land.

Driven from Willow Creek, they set off up-

176

(pioneers

stream in search of a new home, probably without
knowing of Lily Lake, which was five miles dis-
tant and two thousand feet up a steep, rocky
mountain. These pilgrims had traveled only a
little way upstream when they found themselves
the greater portion of the time out of water. This
was only a brook at its best and in most places it
was such a shallow, tiny streamlet that in it they
could not dive beyond the reach of enemies or
even completely cool themselves. In stretches
the water spread thinly over a grassy flat or a
smooth granite slope ; again it was lost in the
gravel; or, murmuring faintly, pursued its way
out of sight beneath piles of boulder, — marbles
shaped by the Ice King. Much of the time they
were compelled to travel upon land exposed to
their enemies. Water-holes in which, they could
escape and rest were long distances apart.

This plodding, perilous five-mile journey which
the beaver made up the mountain to the lake
would be easy and care-free for an animal with
the physical make-up of a bear or a wolf, but
with the beaver it is not surprising that only two
of the emigrants survived this supreme trial and

177

3n

escaped the numerous dangers of the pilgrim-
age.

Lily Lake is a shallow, rounded
that reposes in a glacier meadow at an altitude
of nine thousand feet ; its golden pond-lilies often
dance among reflected snowy peaks, while over
it the granite crags of Lily Mountain rise several
hundred feet. A few low, sedgy, grassy acres
border half the shore, while along the remainder
are crags, aspen groves, willow-clumps, and scat-
tered pines. Its waters come from springs in its
western margin and overflow across a low grassy
bar on its curving eastern shore.

It was autumn when these beaver pioneers
came to Lily Lake's primitive and poetic border.
The large green leaves of the pond-lily rested
upon the water, while from the long green stems
had fallen the sculptured petals of gold ; the wil-
lows were wearing leaves of brown and bronze,
and the yellow tremulous robes of the aspens
glowed in the golden sunlight.

These fur-clad pioneers made a dugout — a hole
in the bank — and busily gathered winter food
until stopped by frost and snow ; then, almost

178

care-free, they dozed away the windy winter days
while the lake was held in waveless ice beneatf
the drifting snow.

The next summer a house was built in the lily
pads near the shore. Here a number of children
were born during the few tranquil years that fol-
lowed. These times came to an end one bright
midsummer day. Lord Dunraven had a ditch
cut in the outlet rim of the lake with the inten-
tion of draining it that his fish ponds, several
miles below in his Estes Park game-preserve,
might have water. A drouth had prevailed for
several months, and a new water-supply must be
had or the fish ponds would go dry. The water
poured forth through the ditch, and the days of
the colony appeared to be numbered.

A beaver must have water for safety and for
the ease of movement of himself and his supplies.
He is skillful in maintaining a dam and in reg-
ulating the water-supply; these two things re-
quire much of his time. In Lily Lake the dam
and the water question had been so nicely con-
trolled by nature that with these the colonists
had had nothing to do. However, they still knew

179

3n

how to build dams, and water-control had not be-
come a lost art. The morning after the comple-
tion of the drainage ditch, a man was sent up to
the lake to find out why the water was not com-
ing down. A short time after the ditch-diggers
had departed, the lowering water had aroused the
beaver, who had promptly placed a dam in the
mouth of the ditch. The man removed this dam
and went down to report. The beaver speedily re-
placed it. Thrice did the man return and destroy
their dam, but thrice did the beaver promptly
restore it.

The dam-material used in obstructing the ditch
consisted chiefly of the peeled sticks from which
the beaver had eaten the bark in winter; along
with these were mud and grass. The fourth
time that the ditch guard returned, he threw
away all the material in the dam and then set
some steel traps in the water by the mouth of the
ditch. The first two beaver who came to reblock-
ade the ditch were caught in these traps and
drowned while struggling to free themselves.
Other beaver heroically continued the work that
these had begun. The cutting down of saplings

1 80

(pioneers

and the procuring of new material made their
work slow, very slow, in the face of the swiftly
escaping water; when the ditch was at last ob-
structed, a part of the material which formed this
new dam consisted of the traps and the dead
bodies of the two beaver who had bravely perished
while trying to save the colony.

The ditch guard returned with a rifle, and
came to stay. The first beaver to come within
range was shot. The guard again removed the
dam, made a fire about twenty feet from the ditch,
and planned to spend the night on guard, rifle
in hand. Toward morning he became drowsy,
sat down by the fire, heard the air in the pines
at his back, watched the star-sown water, and
finally fell asleep. While he thus slept, with his
rifle across his lap, the beaver placed another —
their last — obstruction before the outrushing
water.

On awakening, the sleeper tore out the dam
and stood guard over the ditch. All that after-
noon a number of beaver hovered about, watch-
ing for an opportunity to stop the water again.
Their opportunity never came, and three who

181

3n

ventured too near the rifleman gave up their
lives, — reddening the clear water with their life-
blood in vain.

The lake was drained, and the colonists aban-
doned their homes. One night, a few days after
the final attempt to blockade the ditch, an unwill-
ing beaver emigrant party climbed silently out
of the uncovered entrance of their house and
made their way quietly, slowly, beneath the stars,
across the mountain, descending thence to Wind
River, where they founded a new colony.

Winter came to the old lake-bed, and the lily
roots froze and died. The beaver houses rapidly
crumbled, and for a few years the picturesque
ruins of the beaver settlement, like many a set-
tlement abandoned by man, stood pathetically
in the midst of wilderness desolation. Slowly the
water rose to its old level in the lake, as the out-
let ditch gradually filled with swelling turf and
drifting sticks and trash. Then the lilies came
back with rafts of green and boats of gold to
enliven this lakelet of repose.

One autumn morning, while returning to my
cabin after a night near the stars on Lily Moun-

182

(})ioneer0

tain, I paused on a crag to watch the changing
morning light down Wind River Canon. While
thus engaged, Flat-top and a party of colonists
came along a game trail within a few yards of
me, evidently bound for the lake, which was only
a short distance away. I silently followed them.
This was my introduction to Flat-top.

On the shore these seven adventurers paused
for a moment to behold the scene, or, possibly, to
dream of empire ; then they waddled out into the
water and made a circuit of the lake. Probably
Flat-top had been here before as an explorer.
Within two hours after their arrival these colon-
ists began building for a permanent settlement.

It was late to begin winter preparation. The
clean, white aspens had shed their golden leaves
and stood waiting to welcome the snows. This
lateness may account for the makeshift of a hut
which the colonists constructed. This was built
against the bank with only one edge in the water ;
the entrance to it was a twelve-foot tunnel that
ended in the lake-bottom where the water was
two feet deep.

The beaver were collecting green aspen and

183

3n

willow cuttings in the water by the tunnel-entrance
when the lake froze over. Fortunately for the
colonists, with their scanty supply of food, the
winter was a short one, and by the first of April
they were able to dig the roots of water plants
along the shallow shore where the ice had melted.
One settler succumbed during the winter, but
by summer the others had commenced work on
a permanent house, which was completed before
harvest time.

I had a few glimpses of the harvest-gathering
and occasionally saw Flat-top. One evening, while
watching the harvesters, I saw three new workers.
Three emigrants — from somewhere — had joined
the colonists. A total of fifteen, five of whom
were youngsters, went into winter quarters, — a
large, comfortable house, a goodly supply of food,
and a location off the track of trappers. The cold,
white days promised only peace. But an unpre-
ventable catastrophe came before the winter was
half over.

One night a high wind began to bombard the
ice-bound lake with heavy blasts. The force of
these intermittent gales suggested that the wind

184

was trying to dislodge the entire ice covering of
the lake; and indeed that very nearly happened.

Before the crisis came, I went to the lake, believ-
ing it to be the best place to witness the full effects
of this most enthusiastic wind. Across the ice
the gale boomed, roaring in the restraining forest
beyond. These broken rushes set the ice vibrat-
ing and the water rolling and swelling beneath.
During one of these blasts the swelling water
burst the ice explosively upward in a fractured
ridge entirely across the lake. In the next few
minutes the entire surface broke up, and the wind
began to drive the cakes upon the windward
shore.

A large flatboat cake was swept against the
beaver house, sheared it off on the water-line,
and overturned the conelike top into the lake.
The beaver took refuge in the tunnel which ran
beneath the lake-bottom. This proved a death-
trap, for its shore end above the water-line was
clogged with ice. As the lake had swelled and
surged beneath the beating of the wind, the water
had gushed out and streamed back into the tunnel
again and again, until ice formed in and closed

185

3n

the outer entrance. Against this ice four beaver
were smothered or drowned. I surmised the
tragedy but was helpless to prevent it. Mean-
while the others doubled back and took refuge
upon the ruined stump of their home. From a
clump of near-by pines I watched this wild drama.

Less than half an hour after the house was
wrecked, these indomitable animals began to re-
build it. Lashed by icy waves, beaten by the
wind, half-coated with ice, these home-loving
people strove to rebuild their home. Mud was
brought from the bottom of the pond and piled
upon the shattered foundation. This mud set —
froze — almost instantly on being placed. They
worked desperately, and from time to time I caught
sight of Flat-top. Toward evening it appeared
possible that the house might be restored, but,
just as darkness was falling, a roaring gust struck
the lake and a great swell threw the new part
into the water.

The colonists gave up the hopeless task and
that night fled down the mountain. Two were
killed before they had gone a quarter of a mile.
Along the trail were three other red smears upon

1 86

(pioneers

the crusted snow; each told of a death and a
feast upon the wintry mountain-side among the
solemn pines. Flat-top with five others finally
gained the Wind River Colony, from which he
had led his emigrants two years before.

One day the following June, while examining
the lilies in the lake, I came upon a low, freshly
,cut stump; — Flat-top had returned. A number
of colonists were with him and all had come to
stay.

All sizable aspen that were within a few yards
of the water had been cut away, but at the south-
west corner of the lake, about sixty feet from the
shore, was an aspen thicket. Flat-top and his
fellow workers cut a canal from the lake through
a low, sedgy flat into this aspen thicket. The canal
was straight, about fourteen inches deep and
twenty-six inches wide. Its walls were smoothly
cut and most of the excavated material was piled
evenly on one side of the canal and about eight
inches from it. It had an angular, mechanical ap-
pearance, and suggested the work not of a beaver,
but of man, and that of a very careful man too.

Down this canal the colonists floated the tim-

187

bers used in building their two houses. On the
completion of the houses, the home-builders re-
turned to the grove and procured winter supplies.
In most cases the small aspen were floated to the
pile between the houses with an adept skill, with-
out severing the trunk or cutting off a single
limb.

The colonists had a few years of ideal beaver
life. One summer I came upon Flat-top and a
few other beaver by the brook that drains the
lake, and at a point about half a mile below its
outlet. It was along this brook that Flat-top's
intrepid ancestors had painfully climbed to estab-
lish the first settlement in the lake. Commonly
each summer several beaver descended the moun-
tain and spent a few weeks of vacation along
Wind River. Invariably they returned before the
end of August; and autumn harvest-gathering
usually began shortly after their return.

Year after year the regularly equipped trappers
passed the lake without stopping. The houses
did not show distinctly from the trail, and the
trappers did not know that there were beaver in
this place. But this peaceful, populous lake was

1 88

not forever to remain immune from the wiles of
man, and one day it was planted with that bar-
baric, cruel torture-machine, the steel trap.

A cultured consumptive, who had returned
temporarily to nature, was boarding at a ranch
house several miles away. While out riding he
discovered the colony and at once resolved to
depopulate it. The beaver ignored his array of
traps until he enlisted the services of an old
trapper, whose skill sent most of the beaver to
their death before the sepia-colored catkins ap-
peared upon the aspens. Flat-top escaped.

The ruinous raid of the trappers was followed
by a dry season, and during the drouth a rancher
down the mountain came up prospecting for
water. He cut a ditch in the outlet ridge of the
lake, and out gushed the water. He started home
in a cheerful mood, but long before he arrived,
the "first engineers" had blocked his ditch. Dur-
ing the next few days and nights the rancher
made many trips from his house to the lake,
and when he was not in the ditch, swearing, and
opening it, the beaver were in it shutting off
the water.

189

3n

From time to time I dropped around to see
the struggle, one day coming upon the scene
while the beaver were completing a blockade.
For a time the beaver hesitated ; then they partly
resumed operations and carried material to the
spot, but without showing themselves entirely
above water. When it appeared that they must
have enough to complete the blockade, I advanced
a trifle nearer so as to have a good view while
they placed the accumulated material. For a time
not a beaver showed himself. By and by an aged
one climbed out of the water, pretending not
to notice me, and deliberately piled things right
and left until he had completed the ditch-dam-
ming to his satisfaction. This act was audacious
and truly heroic. The hero was Flat-top.

In this contest with the rancher, the beaver
persisted and worked so effectively that they at
last won and saved their homes, in the face of what
appeared to be an unconquerable opposition.

A little while after this incident, a home-seeker
came along, and, liking the place, built a cabin in
a clump of pines close to the southern shore.
Though he was a gray old man without a family

190

I imagined he would exterminate the beaver and
looked upon him with a lack of neighborly
feeling.

Several months went by, and I had failed to
call upon him, but one day while passing I heard
him order a trapper off the place. This order was
accompanied by so strong a declaration of prin-
ciples— together with a humane plea for the life
of every wild animal — that I made haste to call
that evening.

One afternoon in a pine thicket, close to the
lake-shore, I came upon two gray wolves, both
devouring beaver, which had met their death
while harvesting aspens for winter. The follow-
ing spring I had a more delightful glimpse of
life in the wilds. Within fifty feet of the lake-
shore stood a large pine stump that rose about
ten feet from the ground. Feeling that I should
escape notice if I sat still on the top, I climbed
up. Though it was mid-forenoon, the beaver
came out of the lake and wandered about nib-
bling here and there at the few green plants of
early spring. They did not detect me. They ac-
tually appeared to enjoy themselves. This is the

191

only time that I ever saw a beaver fully at eas
and apparently happy on land. In the midst of
their pleasures, a flock of mountain sheep came
along and mingled with them. The beaver paused
and stared ; now and then a sheep would mo-
mentarily stare at a beaver, or sniff the air as
though he did not quite like beaver odor. In less
than a minute the flock moved on, but just as
they started, a beaver passed in front of the lead
ram, who made a playful pretense of a butt at
him ; to this the beaver paid not the slightest
heed.

During the homesteader's second summer he
concluded to raise the outlet ridge, deepen the
water, and make a fish pond of the lake. Being
poor, he worked alone with wheelbarrow and
shovel. The beaver evidently watched the pro-
gress of the work, and each morning their fresh
footprints showed in the newly piled earth.
Shortly before the dam was completed, the home-
steader was called away for a few days, and on
his return he was astonished to find that the
beaver had completed his dam! The part made
by the beaver suited him as to height and length,

192

(pioneers

so he covered it over with earth and allowed it to
remain. His work in turn was inspected and ap-
parently approved by the beaver.

How long does a beaver live? Trappers say
from fifteen to fifty years. I had glimpses of
Flat-top through eighteen years, and he must
have been not less than four years of age when I
first met him. This would make his age twenty-
two years ; but he may have been six years of
age — he looked it — the morning he first led
emigrants into Lily Lake ; and he may have
lived a few years after I saw him last. But only
the chosen few among the beaver can succeed in
living as long as Flat-top. The last time I saw
him was the day he dared me and blockaded the
drain ditch and stopped the outrushing water.

Flat-top has vanished, and the kind old home-
steader has gone to his last long sleep ; but the
lake still remains, and still there stands a beaver
house among the pond-lilies.

Cofong in

Cofon? in

3N the Medicine Bow Mountains one December
day, I came upon a beaver house that was
surrounded by a pack of wolves. These beasts
were trying to break into the house. Apparently
an early autumn snow had blanketed the house
and thus prevented its walls from freezing. The
soft condition of the walls, along with the ex-
treme hunger of the wolves, led to this assault.
Two of these animals were near the top of the
house clawing away at a rapid rate. Now and
then one of the sticks or poles in the house-wall
was encountered, and at this the wolf would bite
and tear furiously. Occasionally one of the wolves
caught a resisting stick in his teeth, and, leaning
back, shook his head, endeavoring with all his
might to tear it out. A number of wolves lay
about expectant; a few sat up eagerly on
haunches, while others moved about snarling,
driving the others off a few yards, to be in turn
driven off themselves. Shortly before they dis-

197

covered me, there was a fierce fight on top of
house, in which several mixed.

Even though they had broken into the house,
it would have availed them nothing, for in this,
as in all old colonies, there were safety tunnels
from the house which extended beneath the pond
to points on shore. In these tunnels the beaver
find safety, if by any means the house is ruined.
Although carnivorous animals are fond of beaver
flesh, they rarely take the useless trouble of dig-
ging into a house. Occasionally a wolverine or a
bear may dig into a thin-walled house or one not
frozen, then, after breaking in, lie in wait, and
endeavor to make a capture while the beaver are
repairing the hole. Beaver are more secure from
enemies during the winter than at any other
time. It is while felling a tree far from the water
or while following a shallow stream that most
beaver are captured by their enemies.

Many a time in winter I have made a pleasant
visit to a beaver colony. One day, a few hours
after a heavy snowfall, I came out of a dark forest
and stood for a time on the edge of the snow-
covered pond. Around were the firs and spruces

198

Cofonp in

of the forest, moveless as statues and each a
pointed cone of snow. Around the small snowy
plain of the pond, the drooping snow-entangled
willows held their heads together in contented
and thoughtful silence. Everything was serene.

A clean fox track led from the woods in a
straight line across the snowy surface of the
pond to the house, which stood near the centre
of this smooth white opening. The tracks en-
circled the house and ascended to the top of it,
where the record imprinted in the snow told that
here he watchfully rested. Descending, he had
sniffed at the bushy tips of the winter food-pile
that thrust up through the ice, then crossed the
dam to plunge into the snowy tangle of willows.

Water was still pouring and gurgling down a
steep beaver slide. This was ice-and-sno w-covered
except at two points where the swift splashing
water dashed intermittently from a deep icy vent.
While I was examining the beauty of the up-
building icy buttresses by one of the vents, a water-
ouzel came forth and alighted almost within reach.
I stood still. After giving a few of his nodding
bows, he reentered the vent. Presently he emerged

199

from the lower vent and, alighting upon an ice-
coated boulder, indifferent to the gray sky from
which scattered flakes were slowly falling and de-
spite a temperature of five below zero, he sang
low and sweetly for several seconds.

Beaver do not surrender themselves to the con-
fines of a house and pond until cold solidly
covers the pond with a roof of ice. The time of
this is commonly about the first of December,
but the date is of course, in a measure, depend-
ent upon latitude, altitude, and the peculiar
weather conditions of each year. Most beaver
return to the old colony, or start a new one by
the first of September. They have had a merry
rambling summer and energetically take hold to
have the house and dam ready and a harvest
stored by the time winter begins.

But they are not always ready. Enemies may
harass them, low water delay them, or an un-
usually early winter or even a heavy snow may
so hamper them that, despite greatest effort, the
ice puts a time lock upon the pond and closes them
in for the winter without sufficient supplies.

Early one October an early snowfall worked

200

Cofonp in

hardship in several colonies near my home. For-
tunately the ponds were not deeply frozen, and
those colonies which had aspen groves close to
the water succeeded in felling and dragging in
sufficient food-supplies for the winter. As snow
drifted into the groves, many of the trees har-
vested were cut from the tops of snowdrifts, and
thus left high stumps. The following summer a
number of these stood four feet above the earth
and presented a striking appearance alongside the
sixteen-inch stumps of normal height.

One of these storm-caught colonies fared badly.
The inhabitants were obliged to go a long dis-
tance from the water for trees, and their all too
scanty harvest was gathered with some loss of
life. Apparently both wolves and lions discovered
the unfortunate predicament of the harvesters,
and lay in wait to catch them as they floundered
slowly through the snow. The following winter
these colonists tunneled through the bottom —
perhaps the least frozen part of the dam — and
came forth for food long before the break-up of
the ice. The water drained from the pond, and
after the ice had melted, the bottom of the pond

201

revealed a torn-up condition as though the starv-
ing winter inmates had dug out for food every
root and rootstock to be found in the bottom.

While visiting ponds at the beginning of win-
ter, I have many times noticed that, shortly after
the pond was solidly frozen over, a hole was made
through the dam just below the water-surface of
the pond. This lowered the water-level two inches
or more. Did this slight lowering of the water
have to do with the ventilation of the ice-covered
pond, or was it to put a check on deep freezing,
or for both purposes ?

In the majority of cases these holes were made
from ponds which, during the winter, received
but a meagre inflow of fresh water. Naturally,
ponds receiving a strong inflow of water would
be better ventilated, and would freeze less swiftly
and deeply than those whose waters became
stagnant. This drawing-off of water after a few
inches of ice had formed, would, in some places,
despite the settling of the ice, form an air blanket
that would delay freezing, and thus possibly pre-
vent the ice from forming so thickly. The air
admitted by drawing off the water would be in-

202

Cofonj) in

closed beneath the ice, and might thus be helpful
to the beaver inclosed in house and pond. In
only a few cases were these holes made from ponds
which had subway tunnels, — tunnels which run
from alongside the house through the bottom of
the pond to a point above water-level on the shore.
In a few instances the beaver, I do not know how
many, came out of this hole, cut and ate a few
twigs, and then returned and closed it. Twice this
was used as a way out by beaver who emerged
and went to other colonies. In one case the
beaver entered the other pond by making a hole
through the dam. In the other they entered the
pond through a subway tunnel. While these holes
which lower the pond-level may have chiefly to
do with ventilation, or may be for the purpose of
putting a check on freezing, my evidence is not
ample enough for final conclusions.

A sentence of close confinement for about a
third of the year for an animal that breathes air
and uses pure water, is simply one of the strange
ways that work out with nature. While winter
lasts, a beaver must spend his time either in the
dark, ill-ventilated house or in the water of the

203

pond. Apparently he does much sleeping an
possibly has a dull time of it. No news, no vis-
itors, and apparently nothing to do ! Still a
beaver has food, and when dangers surround the
wild folk outside the pond's roof of glass, he
would be considered a good risk for life insurance.

Although the pond is commonly covered with
snow, or the ice curtained with air bubbles, there
have been numerous times during which I have
had clear views into the water, and could see and
enjoy all that was going on within, as completely
as though looking at fish or turtles through the
glass walls of an aquarium. Often I have peered
through the ice which covered the most used
place of a winter beaver pond, --the area be-
tween the house-entrance and the food-pile. The
thinness of the ice over this place was main-
tained by spring-water which came up through
the bottom, and the beaver had so arranged their
affairs that they made the best use of this shal-
low-freezing water. Of course most ponds are
without springs.

Many a time I have seen a beaver come out of
the doorway of his house and go swimming to-

204

(Cofonp in

ward the food-pile with his hands against his
breast. At the pile, if there was nothing small or
short enough, he set to work and gnawed it off.
The piece secured was taken into the doorway
either in his hands or in his teeth. Afterward a
beaver — the same one, I suppose — came out
of the doorway, and cast the clean bone of the
stick, from which the bark had been eaten, into
the bottom of the pond.

When there is nothing else to do, the beaver
apparently comes into the pond a few times each
day for a swim. In the midst of swimming he
rises at times to the under surface of the ice and,
with his nose against it, exhales a quantity of air.
After remaining with nose at this point a few
seconds, the action of the air bubbles indicates
that he is inhaling the purified air.

The rootstocks of the water-lily are sometimes
dug from the bottom of the pond. At other times
the beaver eats the stalks of plants that grow in
the water, or digs out willow or other roots around
the edge of the pond. Numbers of trout frequently
lie in the water close to the doorway of a beaver
house or around the food-pile. Possibly the beaver

205

3n

dispense tidbits of food that are liked by the
trout. Occasionally grubs fall from the holes in
wood from which beaver have eaten the bark.
While beaver are digging in the bottom of the
pond they doubtless unearth food-scraps that
are welcome to trout, for these often hover in
numbers on the outskirts of the muddy water
which beaver roil while digging.

Although it appears that beaver have dull
winters with but little to do but eat, sleep, and
swim, it is probable that some of their time is
spent at work. A part of their tunneling and
pond-bottom canal-digging is done in winter. I
have known of their extending canals in the bot-
tom of the pond and making submarine tunnels
while the pond was ice-covered.

There are times when the dam has sprung a
leak and must be repaired on the inside beneath
the ice. Early thaws and spring freshets some-
times wreck a dam beyond repair, or do extens-
ive damage to the house or dam at the time when
beaver enemies are likely to be at their leanest.
The house and dam are sometimes ruined when
the streams are so low and icy that it is not safe

206

n

for beaver to go about. I know of two colonies
that were crushed out of existence by snow-slides.

The dam is on rare occasions broken by late
spring ice -jams. Sometimes the ice-cakes pile
up on the dam and raise the water in the pond to
such a height that it rises in the house and drives
the beaver forth. A few beaver houses that are
situated in places where the ice or spring floods
may raise the water much above normal level are
shaped to meet this trouble. The house is built
higher and the room internally is twice the usual
height. Thus there is space for the beaver to
build a " platform bed " on the floor and thus
raise themselves a foot or more above the common
level. Despite all pains, floods sometimes drive
beaver to the housetops.

By laying up supplies, and by the help of arti-
ficial pond, canal, and house, the beaver is able
to spend his winter without hunger and with
comfort and far greater safety than his neighbors.
The winds may blow and blinding snow or flying
limbs may endanger those outside; snow may
bury the forage of bird and deer, and make the
movement of beasts of prey slow and difficult; the

207

cold may freeze and freeze and strew the wilds
with lean and frozen forms ; but the beaver be-
neath ice and snow shelter serenely spends the
days with comfort and safety.

The winter, with its days long or short, never
comes to an end, however, quite early enough to
suit the beaver. They emerge from the pond at
the earliest moment that frozen conditions will
allow. If their subway is choked with ice, and
food becomes exhausted, they will sometimes bore
holes through the base of the dam.

Apparently, too, holes of this kind are bored
through, or a section cut through the dam to the
bottom, for the purpose of completely draining
the pond. As this appears to be most often done
with ponds that are full of stagnant water, or
water almost stagnant, this draining may be a
part of the beaver's sanitary work, — done for the
purpose of getting filth and stale water out and
also that the sour bottom may be sterilized by
sun and wind.

Conditions determine the length of time before
the dam is repaired and the pond refilled. In some
cases this is done after the lapse of a few weeks

208

Cofony in TW

and in others not until autumn. Ponds that have
large pure streams running through them do not
need this emptying, but occasionally they acci-
dentally have it. Most beaver colonies are deserted
in summer, and fall thus into temporary decline.
By late summer or early autumn the beaver
have assembled at the place where the winter is
to be spent. There are patriarchs, youngsters,
and those in the prime of life. Around the old
home are many who set forth from it when the
violets were blooming, when the grass was at its
greenest, and when mated birds were building.
During the summer a few perished, while others
cast their lot with other established colonies. A
few of the younger make a start for themselves
in new scenes, — found a new colony. Again the
dam is repaired and the house recovered; again
the harvest home, and again a primitive home-
building family are housed in a hut that willing
hands have fashioned. Again the pond freezes,
and again the snowfalls upon a home that stands
in a valley where countless generations of beaver
have lived through ice-bound winters and the
ever-changing happy seasons.

o "work like a beaver" is an almost uni«
versal expression for energetic and intelli-
gent persistence, but who realizes the magnitude
of the beaver's works ? What he has accomplished
is not only monumental but useful to man. He
was the original Conservationist. An interesting
and valuable book could be written concerning
the earth as influenced and benefited by the labors
of the beaver. The beaver is intimately associated
with the natural resources, soil, and water. His
work is not yet done, and along the sources of
innumerable streams he will ever be needed to
save soil, to regulate stream-flow, and to provide
pools for the fish.

The beaver's conservation work is accom-
plished by means of the dams he constructs across
streams of flowing water and the ponds that are
thus formed. These dams and ponds render a

213

number of services: first, they save soil; second,
they check erosion ; third, they reduce flood dam-
age ; fourth, they store water and help to sustain
stream-flow; fifth, they provide water-holes for
fish; and sixth, they are helpful in maintaining
deep waterways by reducing the extremes of both
high and low water, and also by reducing the
quantity of sediment carried down into river-
channels.

I had enjoyed the ways of " our first engineers"
before it dawned upon me that their works might
be useful to man, and that the beaver through
his constructive handling of the natural resources
might justly be called a conservationist. One dry
winter the stream through the Moraine Colony
ran low and froze to the bottom, and the only
trout in it that survived were those in the deep
holes of beaver ponds. These ponds offer many
advantages to fish multiplication. Much food ac-
ceptable to the fish is swept into these ponds.
Altogether a beaver pond is an excellent local
habitation for fish.

One gray day while I was examining a beaver
colony there came another demonstration of the

214

Drtginof

usefulness of beaver ponds. The easy rain of two
days ended in a heavy downpour — a deluge upon
the mountain-side a mile or so upstream. There
was almost nothing on this mountain either to ab-
sorb or delay the excess of water which was speed-
ily shed into the stream below. Flooding down
the stream's channel above the beaver pond, came
a roaring avalanche of water, or water-slide, with a
rubbish-filled front that was five or six feet high.
This expanded as it rolled into the pond, and
swept far out on the sides, while the water-front,
greatly lowered, rushed over the dam. A half a
dozen ponds immediately below sufficed so to
check the speed of this water and so greatly to
reduce its volume that as it poured over the last
dam of this colony it was no longer a flood.

The regulation of stream-flow is important.
There are only a few rainy days each year, and
all the water that flows to the sea through river-
channels falls during these few rainy days. The
instant the water reaches the earth it is hurried
away by gravity, and unless there are factors to
delay this run-off, the rivers would naturally
contain water only on the rainy days and for a

215

little while thereafter. A beaver dam and pond
together form a factor of importance in the keep-
ing of streams ever flowing. The pond is a reser-
voir which catches and retains some of the water
coming into it during rainy days and which
delays the water-flow through it. A beaver pond
is a leaky reservoir, a kind of spring as it were,
and if stored full during rainy days the leakage
from it will help maintain stream-flow below dur-
ing the dry weather. Beaver works thus tend to
distribute to streams a moderate quantity of water
each day. In other words they spread out or dis-
tribute the water of the few rainy days through all
the days of the year.

A river which flows steadily throughout the
year is of inestimable value to mankind. If floods
sweep a river, they do damage. If low water comes,
the wheels of steamers and of factories cease
to move, and a dry river-channel means both
damage and death. Numerous beaver colonies
along the sources of countless streams that rise
in the hills and the mountains would be helpful
in equalizing the flow of these streams. I hope
and believe that before many years every rushing

216

care-free brook that springs from a great water-
shed will be steadied in a poetic pond that is made,
and that will be maintained by our patient, per-
severing friend the beaver.

In the West beaver are peculiarly useful at
stream-sources, where their ponds store flood
waters that may later be used for stock water or
for irrigation purposes. There are a number of
localities in New Mexico, South Dakota, and
elsewhere in the West where beaver receive the
utmost protection and encouragement from
ranchers, whose herds are benefited by water con-
veniently stored in beaver ponds. A few power
companies in the country have commenced to
stock with beaver the watersheds which supply
them with water. They do this because they real-
ize that countless small ponds or reservoirs are
certain to be constructed by these little conser-
vationists.

Running water dissolves and erodes away the
earthy materials with which it comes in contact.
The presence of a beaver pond and dam across
a stream's highway prevents the wearing and the
carrying away of material. They not only pre-
217

vent erosion or wearing away, but they take soil
and sediment from the water which comes to
them and thus cause an upbuilding. Hence the
presence of beaver ponds along streams causes an
accumulation of sediment and soil. In time these
fill rocky channels and canons, widen and lengthen
valleys, and thus extend the productive area of
the earth.

Beaver ponds are settling-basins, and in them
are deposited the heavier matter brought in by
the stream. In time the pond is filled, and if the
beaver do not raise the height of the dam, the
accumulated earthy matter becomes covered with
flowers or forests.

On the headwaters of the Arkansas River in
Colorado some placer miners found gold in the
sediment of an inhabited beaver pond. In wash-
ing out the deposit of the pond they broke into
an enormous amount of loose material beneath,
that apparently had been piled in there by gla-
cial action. This material, when removed, was
found to have been resting in an ancient beaver
pond that was about thirty feet below the one at
the surface.

218

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A few centuries ago there were millions of
beaver ponds in 'North America; most of these
were long since filled with sediment Since then,
too, countless others have been formed and filled.
This soil-saving and soil-spreading still goes ever
on wherever there is a beaver pond.

Many of the richest tillable lands of New Eng-
land were formed by the artificial works of the
beaver. There are hundreds of valleys in Kansas,
Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and other States
whose rich surface was spread upon them by the
activities of beaver through generations. In the
Southern States and in the mountains of the
West, the numbers of beaver meadows are beyond
computation. The aggregate area of rich soil-
deposits in the United States for which we are
indebted to the beaver is beyond belief, and prob-
ably amounts to millions of acres.

The beaver have thus prepared the way for
forests and meadows, orchards and grain-fields,
homes and school-houses. In the golden age of
the beaver, their countless colonies clustered all
over our land. These primeval folk then gathered
their harvest. Innumerable beaver ponds, which

219

then shone everywhere in the sun, slowly filled
with deposited, outspreading soil, — and vanished.
Elm avenues now arch where the low-growing
willow drooped across the canal, and a populous
village stands upon the seat of a primitive and
forgotten colony.

A live beaver is more valuable to mankind
than a dead one. As trappers in all sections of
the country occasionally catch a beaver, it is
probable that there still are straggling ones scat-
tered along streams all the way from salt water
up to timber-line, twelve thousand feet above sea-
level. These remaining beaver may be extermin-
ated ; but if protected they would multiply and
colonize stream-sources. Here they would prac-
tise conservation. Their presence would reduce
river and harbor appropriations and make rivers
more manageable, useful, and attractive. It would
pay us to keep beaver colonies in the heights.
Beaver would help keep America beautiful. A
beaver colony in the wilds gives a touch of ro-
mance and a rare charm to the outdoors. The
works of the beaver have ever intensely interested
the human mind. Beaver works may do for

220

children what schools, sermons, companions, and
even home sometimes fail to do, — develop the
power to think. No boy or girl can become inti-
mately acquainted with the ways and works of
these primitive folk without having the eyes of
observation opened, and acquiring a permanent
interest in the wide world in which we live. A
race which can produce mothers and fathers as
noble as those beaver in the Grand Canon who
offered their lives hoping thereby to save their
children is needed on this earth. The beaver is
the Abou-ben-Adhem of the wild. May his tribe
increase !

THE END

(Uofe

'EAVER literature is scarce. The book which
easily excels is " The American Beaver
and his Works," by Lewis H. Morgan. Samuel
Hearne has an excellent paper concerning the
beaver in " Journey from Prince of Wales Fort
to the Northern Ocean," published in 1 795. Good
accounts of the beaver are given in the following
books : " Beavers : their Ways," by Joseph Henry
Taylor; " Castorologia," by Horace T. Martin;
"Shaggycoat," by Clarence Hawkes ; "The House
in the Water," by Charles G. D. Roberts ; and
" Forest Neighbors," by William Davenport Hul-
bert. There are also admirable papers by Ernest
Thompson Seton in his " Life-Histories of North-
ern Animals," by W. T. Hornaday in his " Amer-
ican Natural History," and by Baillie-Grohman
in " Camps in the Rockies."

Accidents, 144.

Age, 14, 193.

Air, blanket over pond, 202, 203.

American Fur Company, 49.

Arkansas River, 218.

Astor, John Jacob, 49.

Attitudes, 6.

Audubon, John James, 53.

Autumn activities, beginning of, 200.

Bad Lands, 65.

Basins, food, 108. See also Wells.

Beaver, a tame, 22-25.

Beaver, aged, of the Spruce Tree Col-
ony, 83, 84, 95, 96; of Lily Lake,
102-105; migrating to the Moraine
Colony, 167, 168.

Bedding, 122, 123,

Bierstadt Moraine, 140.

Bobcat, 35.

Burrows, no, in; a substitute for
houses, 127, 128.

Canada, emblem of, 43.

Canals, 77, 78, 88, 141, 145-149, 187;
at Lily Lake, 103, 104 ; importance,
105 ; use of excavated material, 105,
106; forms of, 106, 107; system at
Three Forks, Mont., 107-111; dug

in winter, 206.
Castoreum, 43, 44.
Chasm Lake, 142.
Civilization, the beaver's influence on,

47-49-
Color, 8.

225

Colorado River, 25, 50.

Cooperation, 171.

Coyotes, 23, 102, 161-163, I0"6.

Cry, 27.

Cutting trees, methods of, 10-12, 31,
32 ; intelligence shown in, 57, 91 ;
operations observed, 86, 90-96; ac-
cidents in, 144.

Dams, materials, 65-67 ; construction,
66, 67 ; uses, 69 ; growth, 69, 70 ; new
and old, 70, 71 ; discharge from, 71,
72 ; not all beaver build, 72 ; thor-
oughfares, 73 ; effect on topography,
73, 74 ; shape, 75-77 ; an interesting
dam, 76-78 ; waterproofing, 78 ; di-
mensions of a long dam, 78, 79 ; di-
mensions of other dams, 86 ; across
canals, 108-110 ; the dead-wood dam,
143-150 ; across a drainage ditch,
1 80, 181 ; across an irrigation ditch,
189, 190; a homesteader's dam com-
pleted by beaver, 192, 193 ; effect on
stream-flow, 213-217.

Day, working by, 33, 94, 156.

Death, 14.

Ditch, struggle over a, 179-182.

Ditches. See Canals.

Diver, the young beaver, 22-25.

Domestication, 25.
Dunraven, Lord, 179.

Ears, 7.

Enemies, 14; times of danger from,
198.

Engineering, 139-150.

Erosion, checked by beaver, 214, 217,

218.

Errors, 67, 68.
Estes Park, 179.
Europe, the beaver in, 40, 41.
Exploration, 168, 169.
Eyesight, 8.

Fabulous accounts, 53.

Feet, uses of, 5, 6 ; form of, 8.

Feigning injury, 25, 26.

Felling trees. See Cutting trees.

Fence posts, 30.

Fighting, 19, 20, 34, 35.

Fire, 158-163.

Fish, water-holes for, 214.

Flat-top, a beaver pioneer, 175, 176,

183-193-
Floods, 206, 207 ; damage prevented by

beaver, 214, 216.
Food, 10, 84, 205.

Food-piles, 12, 13, 88, 89, 97, 150, 169.
Fossil beaver, 40.
Fox, 199.
Fruit trees, 30.

Geographical distribution, 40-42, 49, 50.

Gold, 218.

Grand Canon, 25, 50.

Hands, uses of, 5 ; form of, 8.

Harvest, a year's, 97 ; a large, 169.

Harvest-gathering, 83-98, 148-150, 157,
158.

Hearing, 8.

Hearne, Samuel, quoted, 53.

History, the beaver in, 41-44.

Homesteader, a friendly, 190-193.

Houses, building, 3 ; occupants, 21 ; di-
mensions, 86, 119, 120, 130, 131 ;
mud plastering, 97, 123-125 ; con-
struction, 119-123, 130, 131; en-

trances, 119, 120; situation, 120,
125-127; burrows a substitute for,
127, 128; a typical house, 130, 131 ;
ventilation, 132; enlargement, 169-
171; security, 197, 198; shaped to
meet floods, 207.
Hudson's Bay Company, the, 48.

Ice, a trouble of beaver existence, 126,
127; a catastrophe caused by, 184-
186 ; on the pond, 200, 202-206 ;
casualties caused by, 207.

Indians, their legends about the beaver,

39-

Individuality, 35, 67.
Industry, 36.
Intelligence, 46, 57-60.
Irrigation-ditches, 31.
Island Colony, harvesting methods 01,
92, 93-

Jefferson River, u, 78, 107, 108.

Kingsford, William, his History
Canada, 48.

Land, beaver seen on, 191, 192

Leadership, 20.

Legends, 39.

Lewis and Clark, 42.

Life, the beaver's, 14-16.

Lily Lake, beaver at, 101-105 ; beaver
house at, 119 ; the pioneer beaver of,
175-193 ; description of, 178.

Lily Mountain, 182.

Lion, mountain, 160-162, 166.

Local attachment, 141, 142.

Long, Stephen Harriman, his Journal,

33-
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, his

Hiawatha quoted, 60, 61.
Long's Peak, 140, 153.
Love ditty, 27.

226

Majors, Alexander, his Seventy Years
on the Frontier, 59, 60.

Martin, Horace T., 49.

Mating, 27.

Medicine Bow Mountains, 197.

Migration, 20, 21, 132, 133, 141, 161-
163, 167-169, 175-177, 182, 183.

Mischief, 30, 31.

Moraine Colony, engineering of, 139,
142-150; discovery and observation
of, 153-158 ; homes destroyed by fire,
r58, 159 5 migrating, 161-163; new
site, 163, 164; old site resettled, 165;
later fortunes, 166-171.

Morgan, Lewis H., his American Bea-
ver and his Works^ 54, 55, 58.

Night, working at, 33.
Northwestern Fur Company, 49.

Old, the, 34.
Outcasts, 34.
Ouzel, water, 199.

Parasites, 14.

Physical make-up, 5-9, 68.

Pipestone Creek, n.

Place-names taken from the beaver, 42,

43-

Play, 29, 156, 157.

Ponds, early abundance, 42; size, 65,
86 ; uses, 68, 69 ; chains or clusters
of, 74 ; depth, 107 ; canals in bottom,
107 ; spring-filled, 113, 114 ; lowering
the level under ice, 202, 203 ; drain-
ing, 208, 209 ; effect on stream-flow,
213-217 ; leaky reservoirs, 216.

Population, changes in, 46, 47.

Protection, 50, 217, 220, 221.

Reason, evidences of, 57, 58.
Romanes, George J., on the beaver, 58,
59-

Sanitation, 208.
Sawtooth Mountains, 66.
Sediment,-a problem of beaver life, 125,

126.

Sheep, mountain, 192.
Size, 7.

Skins, 43, 44, 48, 49.
Sleep, 122.
Slides, 87, 112, 199.
Smell, sense of, 7.
Snake River, 25.
Soil, the beaver's conservation of, 214,

217-220.
Sounds and silence, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27,

'33, '34-
Springs, use of, 204.

Spruce Tree Colony, harvest time with,
83-98 ; tunnels in, 113-115.

Stream-flow, effect of beaver on, 72-
74,213-217.

Strength, 9.

Subways. See Tunnels.

Swimming, method of, 6.

Tail, uses of, 5, 6, u ; form and cover-
ing, 8; signalling with, 24, 31, 96;
fabulous accounts of the uses of,

53-
Teeth, 7-9.

Three Forks, Montana, 42, 79 ; canal
system at, 107-111.

Trails, in, 112.

Transportation of dam and food ma-
terial, 86-90, 92, 93 ; canals used in,
106-115; trails and slides used in,
in, 112, 115 ; tunnels used in, 112-
115.

Trappers, 164, 189-191.

Traps, 35, 189.

Trees, cutting. See Cutting trees.

Trimming trees, 12, 96.

Trout, 205, 206.

Tunnels, 85, 112-115, *9%> a°3»

227

Water. See Stream-flow.
Water-ouzel, 199.
Water-supply, 85, 86.
Weather-wisdom, 44-47.
Weight, 7.

Wells, food, 103, 104. See also Ba-
sins.

Whistle, 26, 27.
Wildcat, 35.

Willow Creek, 176.

Wind River, 102, 175, 182, 188.

Winter, beaver life in, 197-209.

Wolves, gray, 191, 197.

Wood, dead, 143, 144.

Work, accomplished by beaver, 3-5.

Young, birth and care of, 27, 28 ; growth
and play of, 28.

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